Vanderbilt, Michigan

Vanderbilt is a village of about five hundred people in Otsego County, first settled around eighteen seventy-five, reached by the Michigan Central Railroad by eighteen eighty-one, and named for Cornelius Vanderbilt, the railroad and shipping magnate, who owned land in the township. Vanderbilt grew as a logging center, processing the white pine forests of the Pigeon River watershed just to the north. When the timber gave out around nineteen hundred, the town turned to potato farming and dairy, the two mainstays of Otsego County agriculture ever since. Today Vanderbilt is a gateway village for snowmobilers heading into the Pigeon River Country in winter and a quiet stop for travelers on their way to Gaylord, the county seat, about eight miles south.