Coleman, MI

Coleman is a Midland County city built from timber and rail. A sawmill started the settlement in 1870, and the Pere Marquette Railroad station followed the next year, turning the new community into a shipping point for the surrounding woods and farms. Coleman sits twenty miles northwest of Midland and ten miles southeast of Clare, with U.S. 10 tracing its northern edge and Exit 103 providing the modern highway link. The city was incorporated as a village in 1887 and as a city in 1905.

The old lumber-and-rail beginning still fits the city's present mix of small-town streets, industrial work, and regional commuting. Coleman Products, founded in 1947, grew from refrigerator door slabs into thermoformed plastics manufacturing, giving the city a current production story alongside the older sawmill history. Midland supplies county services and larger shopping, while Clare and the U.S. 10 corridor pull in the other direction. Coleman is a place where the railroad town pattern remains visible under a newer highway and manufacturing economy.