Michigan’s Easternmost Point Isn’t Even Marked

Port Huron — Michiganders have a curious geographical habit. When you ask them where they’re from, they don’t just tell you. They pull up their right hand and use it as a crude map of the state, pointing out with their left index finger where their hometown is. It’s a unique quirk that makes a ton of sense the first time you encounter it. Michigan’s Lower Peninsula truly does look like a mitten.

If you were to mark the easternmost point in Michigan, it’d be right at the second joint in your thumb, where the knuckle protrudes further than the rest of the hand. It’s easy enough to find on your hand, but in real life? It isn’t even marked.

The point lies in Port Huron, in a riverfront pathway near the downtown. The grey cement pathway stretches along the St. Clair river, ringed by steel railings to prevent any accidental swimming incidents.

There’s a bend in the path, where it comes to a sort of oblique point, and that’s where you can stand the furthest east in Michigan.

There isn’t much to do there other than stare across the river at Canada watching the boats go by. Some people fish there. Most people walk on by. There isn’t a sign, a plaque, an etched stone, or an obelisk to mark the spot at all.

This is a state, mind you, that’s erected those large green historical marker plaques for just about every other thing under the sun, including the invention of celery farming in Kalamazoo and a chick hatchery in Zeeland.

We can’t blame the state for this one, however. Did you know that the historical marker program is actually privately funded? Anyone can pay $250 to send in an application to the state, and, if it’s approved, pay to fund the sign itself.

The historical marker signs aren’t cheap, mind you. There’s a price list with tons of options. A premium, large sized double sided historical marker sign will run you $4,455 out the door, and you’ll be digging the post holes to plant it in yourself.

A historical marker sign wouldn’t look quite right at this spot anyways. No, something in stone would be better, something more similar to the etched stone marking the Michigan-Ohio-Indiana border point.

That stone was, of course, privately funded by the Hillsdale County Historical Society in 1977. A group that simply took it upon themselves to mark this interesting geographical landmark, sitting right in their backyard.

It’s no giant monument, mind you, but it’s something that makes the fiction of map lines into a true and solid thing. It’s something, and that’s all it takes to make it real.

We won’t pretend like Michigan’s easternmost point will ever be a massive tourist attraction. Port Huron, as nice as it actually is these days, isn’t really a huge draw either. But it deserves something to mark the spot, something to make it real, even if it’s just a sign to take a picture next to or some sort of commemorative stone.

If no one else will do it, maybe I’ll have to take this crusade upon myself. But it’d make more sense for a native Port Huron resident to do it, someone with ties to the community and the local government, who can grease some wheels and make something happen.

I hope someone does, because it’s truly these little details and curiosities that make Michigan the great state that it is. Consider me good for, at the very least, a modest financial contribution to a nicely etched commemorative stone. I won’t even ask you to put my name on it.