This Greek Revival home was built by Charles H. Beers around 1849. Since then it’s served as a home and office, public library, and later a health department and township office.

In 1870 the Port Huron and Lake Michigan Railroad Company, later the Grand Trunk Railroad, opened a rail line and depot in Capac. The depot reopened as the Capac Community Historical Museum in 1994.

C. Harold Wills began working as a draftsman for Henry Ford in 1902 and later Ford’s chief engineer and metallurgist who designed every Ford car until he resigned in 1919.

In 1875 members donated labor, materials, and money to build this chapel, designed by church member William Morton.

Thomas Clegg (1863-1939) and his English-born father, John, built “The Thing,” the first recorded self-propelled vehicle in Michigan (and perhaps in the country) in 1884-85.

Circuit riders, who traveled through local villages, served the Watrousville United Methodist Church when it was established in 1856.

Aaron Watrous and his crew of loggers came here in 1852 to cut the virgin pine of the Cass River Valley. In 1860 he platted the town, naming it Watrousville, and a few years later constructed this building as a general store.

Cork pine grew in abundance along the Cass River and was much in demand. These kings of the forest grew to a height of 150 feet. With forests depleted, a diversified economy developed here—agriculture, manufacturing, and commercial business.

On March 11, 1882, thirty-three years after the nation’s first state fair was held in Detroit, the Tuscola County Fair was organized as the Caro District Agricultural Association.

Peter DeWitt Bush (1818-1913), the second permanent resident of the village of Caro, donated this site for the county courthouse square in 1866. In 1873 the county replaced the former church with a brick courthouse that served the community's needs until 1932 when the present Art Deco style structure was completed.

The Tuscola County Advertiser began publishing on August 21, 1868. The city’s oldest surviving business establishment was founded by Henry G. Chapin, a native of Conesus, New York.

This skillfully designed board and batten Gothic Revival church first served local Episcopalians in 1880. The congregation had been formed in 1871, the year the town was incorporated.

The state highway system began with the State Reward Road program, created by the Michigan Legislature in 1905. The program provided "rewards" to local governments for road improvements made according to state standards. Elkland Township was the first municipality to receive a reward.

The beet sugar industry in Michigan began growing rapidly in the late nineteenth century and is still a popular crop to this day. With more than a century under its belt, there is no shortage of history, Peninsular Sugar Refining Company included.

In 1884 Millington citizens decided to construct a modern brick building. Between 1947 and 1970 eighteen rural schools consolidated to form the Millington Community School District.

Enter the doors of the St. Clair Historical Museum and travel back more than 250 years to the community’s beginning as a British Fort, moving to its days as a Michigan lumbering and brick manufacturing mecca, through its transition to salt purification, and shipbuilding.

Opened on February 11, 2001, the Thomas Edison Depot Museum was the second satellite facility to open as part of the Port Huron Museum. It is housed inside the historic Fort Gratiot train depot built in 1858 by the Grand Trunk Railway, and is the actual depot that Thomas Edison worked out of as a news reporter between 1859 and 1863. Trains connecting here carried people and freight between Port Huron and Detroit, Point Edward/Sarnia (Ontario), and other destinations, linking Port Huron to the rest of the world.

The Port Huron Museum of Arts and History was founded in 1967, and through a community-wide volunteer effort, opened its doors in 1968. Housed in an historic Carnegie Library (built in 1904), the Museum provides exhibitions and programs relating to local history, fine arts (with an emphasis on regional art), decorative arts, natural history, and Great Lakes marine lore. The Museum is the only year-round, multi-disciplinary cultural institution in Michigan’s Thumb Region (a five-county area). The Museum began as a completely volunteer-operated organization, and now employs a staff of seven full-time, three part-time, and seasonal part-time staff during the summer months. In addition to serving our own community, the Museum is recognized throughout the state of Michigan and nationally as a center for research in folk arts, archeology, and Great Lakes marine lore.

Enter into the past when ice was delivered to your door by horse and wagon! Displayed, are over 3,000 items used in the cutting, harvesting, storing, selling and use of natural ice from one of the largest industries in the United States around 1900. View a rare film of ice harvesting in the early 1920s. See ice boxes, tools and an actual size ice wagon. See antique collections: mild industry, license plates, vehicles, dolls and doll buggies and much more.

Lightships are floating lighthouses that are anchored in areas where it was too deep, expensive, or impractical to construct a lighthouse. Lightships displayed a light at the top of a mast and, in areas of fog, also sounded a fog signal and radio beacon. The fog signals used over the years consisted of bells, whistles, trumpets, sirens, and horns. Early fog horns were powered by steam and later by air compressors. The HURON Lightship sounded her fog horn signal in 3 second blasts every 30 seconds and was known locally as “Old B.O.” because of the familiar sound her horn made.