Mason County / Mason County Courthouse

The first permanent Euro-American settlement in Mason County began in 1847 when New York native Burr Caswell and his family arrived at the mouth of the Pere Marquette River and lived in a driftwood cabin near the Ottawa village of Nindebekantunning. Abundant pine forests attracted lumbermen including Charles Mears, James Ludington, and Eber Brock Ward. In 1855 the state legislature organized Mason County, naming it for Michigan’s first governor, Stevens T. Mason, and the Caswell farmhouse in Pere Marquette Township served as the county seat. In 1860 Charles Mears persuaded the board to move the county seat to Little Sauble, later Lincoln, but remote Little Sauble could not compete with booming Ludington, which became the permanent county seat in 1873 after county offices were moved from the now-vanished village. Formerly called Pere Marquette, Ludington had been platted in 1867 by Milwaukee lumberman James Ludington and served as a shipping center for West Michigan lumber. The present courthouse, the fourth structure to serve the county since its establishment, was erected in 1893-94 in Ludington, designed by Grand Rapids architect Sidney J. Osgood in the Richardsonian Romanesque style and built of Jacobsville sandstone from the Upper Peninsula; it is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.

Ludington, Michigan · United States