In 1861, while surveying the first state road through the Huron County wilderness, Rudolph Papst and George Willis Pack camped here and found a much-used, badly damaged axe. At Pack's suggestion, Papst used the name Bad Axe Camp in the survey minutes and on a sign along the main trail, and by the time he returned from the Civil War, the name was on the map. Bad Axe was incorporated as a village in 1885, with first settler Septimus Irwin as president, and on March 15, 1905, it became Huron County's first city, with Joseph Fremont as its first mayor. In 2005, Bad Axe celebrated its first 100 years as a city. It remains the county seat, the largest community in Huron County, and a commercial center for the upper Thumb area.