In 1849 the state of Michigan gave Porter Hazelton over six thousand acres of land in what soon became Hazelton Township.

This structure was built as a bank in 1903. The present building was designed by architect Claire Allen of Jackson and built by Burnett and Baldwin of Corunna.

In 1840 thirteen people founded a Presbyterian congregation on the principles of opposition to slavery and “total abstinence from all intoxicating liquors as a beverage.” It was the first church established in Owosso.

In 1898, Ellen May Tower, an army nurse from Byron, died of typhoid fever in a hospital tent after only ten weeks abroad. Her remains arrived in Detroit, and her funeral took place in Byron two days later. The Owosso Evening Argus hailed the event as the first military funeral in Michigan for a woman.

The Grand Trunk Railway System and the Ann Arbor Railroad built this depot in 1903, at a cost of sixty thousand dollars to serve the thousands of passengers who came to this railroad center.

Durand’s first settlers began farming here in 1837. Its first railroad, the Detroit and Milwaukee, arrived in 1856, thirty-one years before the village of Durand was officially organized.

James Oliver Curwood was born in Owosso on June 12, 1878, and lived here most of his life. Writing and love of nature were his boyhood interests, and by 1908 Curwood was earning his living as a novelist. During the 1920s his books were among the most popular in North America, and many were made into movies.

The Georgian Revival-style school is trimmed in limestone. The bell in the cupola was cast in 1882 and donated by the Corunna Presbyterian Church upon the school’s completion.

Elias Comstock was the first pioneer to erect a permanent residence in Owosso. He moved here in 1836.

Byron Cemetery originated with the 1837 interment of Theodore H. Provost, the son of one of Byron’s founders. According to local historians, Chippewa lived on this site until it became a cemetery.

Born here, above his grandfather’s general store, on March 24, 1902, Thomas Dewey is known as one of Owosso’s most famous sons. After attending the University of Michigan and Columbia University, he began a long and distinguished legal career.

For discoveries in virology and genetics, Hershey, Max Delbrück, and Salvador Luria received the 1969 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine and were credited as "The original founders of the modern science of molecular biology.”

This handsome Romanesque structure was completed in 1897 for the Methodist Protestant Church of Columbiaville. Local Methodists, with the assistance of circuit riders, had organized the church some forty years earlier.

This structure, completed in 1896, was the home of William Peter (1824-1899). Peter, a prominent Columbiaville businessman, was a “rags-to-riches” character.

Tuttle’s granddaughter, noted author Marguerite deAngeli, featured this house in her 1936 children’s book Ted and Nina have a Happy Rainy Day.

In 1884 the Diocese of Detroit acquired property here and built this simple Gothic-inspired church. The stained glass windows admit light into the sanctuary and honor the parish’s Irish founders.

The present classical-inspired structure replaced the original and opened in 1906. In 1982 the bank was listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Designed by the prominent Detroit firm of Smith, Hinchman, and Grylls, the library opened in 1923. In 1981 it was renamed to honor Newbery Award-winning children’s author and illustrator Marguerite de Angeli, who was born in Lapeer in 1889.

The county seat, founded in 1831, was also named Lapeer. The organization of the county government took place in 1835. This courthouse, built-in 1839, is the oldest one still in use in Michigan.

The Ladies Library Association was established in 1871 to provide reading material at a small cost to the community.