Birch Run, Michigan
Near Frankenmuth, Michigan
Birch Run began in eighteen fifty-two as a station stop on the Pere Marquette Railroad, named for the creek lined with birch trees that runs through the area. Its first postmaster, John Moore, helped establish the community. Then in eighteen sixty-three the town briefly changed its name to Deer Lick.
No one today is entirely sure why, but the residents thought better of it and reverted to Birch Run in eighteen sixty-eight. The village incorporated formally in nineteen fifty-five. For most of its history Birch Run was a quiet Saginaw County farming community.
That changed dramatically in nineteen eighty-six when an outlet mall opened just off Interstate Seventy-Five, and what had been a small village of a few hundred people became one of Michigan's most-visited shopping destinations, drawing millions of visitors a year from across the Great Lakes region.
