DETROIT – Michigan is filled with awesome places.
One of those places, Leland, Michigan, was just named one of the coolest in the country.
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The Matador Network named the top 24 coolest towns in America, with Leland making the list.
It’s a small town located on a tiny piece of land between Lake Michigan and Lake Leelanau on Michigan’s Leelanau Peninsula (known for being a wine country and kitesurfing mecca). The fall colors of the forest along the beach dunes is pretty insane.
Here's some history of Leland:
Modern Leland is the site of the oldest and largest Ottawa village on the Leelanau Peninsula. Not far from the river which flowed into Lake Michigan, bark-covered shelters, gardens and fishing sites marked the settlement of Mishi-me-go-bing, "the place where canoes run up into the river to land, because they have no harbor". Some called it Che-ma-go-bing. European settlement began when the Antoine Manseau family came from North Manitou Island in 1853. Antoine Manseau, his son Antoine Jr., and John Miller built a dam near the outlet of what was called the Carp River. Next to the dam they erected a water-powered sawmill, a necessity for the building of a new community. The families of Cook, Porter, Bryant, Buckman, Pickard, Cordes and Thies soon arrived, and docks were constructed as wooding stations. Steamers and schooners tied up at these docks, bringing more and more settlers, and Leland had 200 people by 1867.