Portland: City of Two Rivers

Portland, Michigan sits at the point where the Grand River and the Looking Glass River meet, and that confluence is the whole reason the town exists. A trading post appeared here in eighteen thirty-three. Local tradition says early settlers debated names such as Boguetown and Newmanville before settling on Portland, a name often tied to the landing the two rivers formed.

For decades those waterways powered mills and floated timber downstream. Today the town of about four thousand still calls itself the City of Two Rivers, the rivers still run through downtown, and canoeists and kayakers use the same waterways that once carried the economic lifeblood of mid-Michigan.