Roscommon, Michigan

Roscommon carries the name of a county in the west of Ireland, planted here in the Michigan pines when legislators renamed the county in eighteen forty-three. The county itself was first created in eighteen forty as Mikenauk County, named for a local Native American community, then renamed Roscommon three years later. The area was not formally organized or settled in earnest until eighteen seventy-five, when it became a county seat with the arrival of the railroad and the lumbermen.

One of the first settlers, a Detroiter named George Robinson, arrived around eighteen forty-five and found himself largely alone in the deep forest. The great white pines that drew the loggers were gone within a generation. What replaced the timber economy was tourism, and the Au Sable River running through the area made Roscommon a destination for anglers that it remains today.