Tawas City , Lumber Harbor on Lake Huron

Tawas City was founded in eighteen fifty-four by Gideon Whittemore and his sons, who came from Oakland County and recognized what the sheltered bay and the surrounding white pine forest could mean: a natural harbor for a lumber operation with almost unlimited timber behind it. The town's name derives from Chief O-ta-was, the leader of a local Chippewa band.

The lumber boom transformed Iosco County almost overnight. The county population grew from one hundred seventy-five people in eighteen sixty to more than fifteen thousand by eighteen ninety as logging camps, sawmills, and shipping operations expanded. When the pines ran out, Tawas City reinvented itself as a resort community, trading on the same protected bay and sandy beaches that had sheltered the lumber schooners. It remains the county seat of Iosco County and a summer destination on the Lake Huron shore.