Chelsea, Michigan

Chelsea, Michigan is a small town on Interstate Ninety-Four between Ann Arbor and Jackson with an outsized place in American theatrical history. It was first settled in the eighteen twenties, platted in eighteen fifty, and grew as a farming community along the Michigan Central Railroad. For most of its existence it was known locally for the Chelsea Milling Company, rooted in a flour mill from nineteen oh one, which makes Jiffy baking mixes still sold nationwide.

But Chelsea became nationally famous in the nineteen eighties and nineties as the home of playwright and actor Jeff Daniels, who founded the Purple Rose Theatre Company here in nineteen ninety-one, staging serious new plays in a small Michigan town rather than relocating to New York. The theatre brought professional equity productions to downtown Chelsea and became a model for regional theatre outside major cities. Chelsea incorporated as a city in two thousand four.