Harrison, MI

Harrison is Clare County's seat, a city laid out around the Flint and Pere Marquette Railway in 1879 and named for President William Henry Harrison. The county seat and the lumber mills came together quickly; the Wilson brothers operated mills along Budd Lake, and the old mill site is now Wilson State Park. The railroad that carried timber into wider markets disappeared in 1944, but concrete right-of-way markers still survive around town. Harrison's local map still joins courthouse, lake, park, and the traces of a rail line that helped cut the city out of the northern Michigan woods.