Wolverine, Michigan

Wolverine is a small village in Cheboygan County in the northern Lower Peninsula, platted in eighteen eighty-one and replatted as Wolverine the next year, as the railroad pushed north through the Pigeon River Country. The name celebrates Michigan's oldest nickname, the Wolverine State, though wolverines were likely never common here and some historians believe the name arose from a taunt by Ohio settlers during a border dispute in the eighteen thirties. The village grew as a lumber town, stripping the vast white pine stands of the Pigeon River watershed through the eighteen eighties and nineties.

When the timber ran out, the economy shifted to farming and, eventually, tourism. Today Wolverine sits at the edge of the Pigeon River Country State Forest, one of the largest state forests in the Lower Peninsula, known for its herd of elk, which grew from a small release of animals near Wolverine.