"Michigan seems like a dream to me now" - Paul Simon
The Yorkshire Pudding Spotlight of Curiosity falls today upon a rather ordinary little town in Lapeer County, Michigan, USA. It's North Branch which has grown slowly since it was first settled in 1856. It now has a population of 1096.
Two years ago, it was visited by a YouTube contributor called Daryl Turcott. He mostly focused on the town's Orr Historical Museum and this was the six minute video he produced:-
By the way, I deduce that the little town's unusual name is derived from the fact that it stands on the north branch of The Flint River. For a while in the second half of the nineteenth century, it was known as Beachville after Mr. and Mrs. Richard Beach who were two of the very first settlers. I guess that Mr. and Mrs. George Simmons - the other first settlers - may have objected.
I took a look around North Branch myself with the help of Google Streetview. It seemed a sleepy kind of place. Not much was happening and there was hardly anybody around - not much traffic either. But superficially at least, it appeared quite tidy and relatively affluent.
Above - Huron Street, North Branch - the centre of the town and below two businesses on Huron Street
North Branch Bar & Grill
The Open Door Hair Salon
Above - a small home on Saginaw Street and below a larger home on Spring Street
Below - when the Google Streetview car cruised around North Branch in August of this year there were plenty of banners hanging in the downtown area in praise of local men and women who served in the US military - including Jeffrey Swain:-
David
For some of us we haven't been to our hometown for many years. For many of us our home town has disappeared.
ReplyDeleteBut the Esk that was is still in your heart Red.
DeleteThank you for this interesting trip. Here, we would call a place of well under 2,000 inhabitants a village. North Branch does indeed look tidy, and the flower pots in public places look well cared for.
ReplyDeleteI try to imagine what it was like for these first two couples of settlers. The Beaches and the Simmonses must have had true pioneering spirit, going to live where nobody else lived yet, with no infrastructure such as shops, doctors, schools for their children etc. in place.
You are right about the first settlers and of course it is unlikely that they were looking far into the future - forecasting how rural Michigan might develop over a hundred years.
DeleteThe size difference between those two houses is quite an eyeful.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I should have included one of several mansions in North Branch.
DeleteI know of some who do wish that they could forget where they came from.
ReplyDeleteRawcliffe, Snaith and Goole ain't so bad mate.
DeleteWell, I was not expecting that ending. Can I guess that residents of the town will vote wrongly in the forthcoming election?
ReplyDeleteMichigan is a state that is in the balance. As I write Kamala Harris is speaking in Grand Rapids and the nasty, halfwitted Republican candidate will be speaking in Detroit later.
DeleteI enjoy how you "travel" to various random places and we get to view them via google. I noticed that when I went home for my mother's 90th, a lot of the little towns had those banners honoring servicemen and women. Maybe it is now a thing to do.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the banners are a signal of conservatism and national pride. I hope that those who put them up appreciate that Trump was a draft dodger.
DeleteI'm curious as to what drew you to this particular small town.
ReplyDeleteTravel Penguin below. A couple of months ago he told me he would be okay about a blogpost on North Branch.
DeleteWhat a nice surprise, thank you. I went to high school with the current patriarch of the Orr family. The Bar and Grill is the best place to eat in town, my family gathered there after a funeral a few years ago. My had my first checking account at Pioneer State Bank when I was 15. We lived about 3 miles south west of the Village. In the middle of farmland.
ReplyDeleteThe new high school on the edge of town looks pretty impressive.
DeleteOh, interesting, Neil. I like David's blog!
ReplyDeleteDavid's blog is nice - upbeat, informative and generally uncontroversial.
DeleteFunny, but this fall I have seen not one but two of those cars with cameras mounted to tripods on the roof in the rural part of the county where I grew up. I just checked and behold, those videos are already available with the date stamp of August 2024 on them. Unfortunately, they didn't go down any of the gravel roads and because it was August, the corn fields were still in play so the farm isn't visible to the unknowledgeable eye.
ReplyDeleteI remember specifically where I saw one of them and checked to see if I was in their video but it had just been pulling off the road into a rural country gas station and they must have edited that part out. The other, I can't remember exactly where I saw it so there might be a video of me driving by somewhere out there for posterity.
I was on Google Streetview footage near Sheffield but for some reason - two days later it was gone.
DeleteAh, a place from Travel's past; the downtown does look a little desolate but maybe everyone was in church???
ReplyDeleteI don't known when the August 2024 footage was gathered.
DeleteIt's very similar to the small communities in rural northern Maine where I grew up: tidy and empty. You'll notice there are flowers but not a lot of flower beds or displays around houses. That's because of the northern latitudes where the growing season is too short for the beautiful displays you see in more southern states or the UK.
ReplyDeleteI have been to southern Maine but northern Maine must seem a long way from mainstream America.
DeleteI tried like crazy to comment on this post at work, but I could not get the comment to take. Kept getting an error message. We'll see if it works this time.
ReplyDeleteWhat I said was, you're on Dave's home turf now! Or at least in his home state. That hair salon is such a peculiar building -- clearly sandwiched between two older structures.
Where did Dave grow up Steve? I bet it wasn't downtown Detroit!
DeleteLike you, I love wasting time by "visiting" little places with Google Streetview. As a matter of fact, sometimes I visit little villages in foreign countries just to get some inspiration for painting a thing or two. Yesterday, I visited Angle Islet which is the northernmost point of the United States in the Lake of the Woods. Quite a story for you there.
ReplyDeleteHey Donna! I already blogged about Angle back in 2023. See here:-
Deletehttps://beefgravy.blogspot.com/2023/04/angle.html
It's been over 35 years since I've been in my home town in North Dakota. At times I think I'd like to visit it again but when I look at it on the web I think I wouldn't recognize it.
ReplyDelete