Best Web Design in Grayling Charter Township, MI (2026)

Web Design for Grayling Charter Township, Michigan

Grayling Charter Township wraps around the small city of Grayling in Crawford County, straddling the headwaters of the Au Sable and Manistee rivers in the northern Lower Peninsula. It is the second-largest charter township by land area in Michigan and the largest municipality by land area in the Lower Peninsula, home to Lake Margrethe, Camp Grayling, and Hartwick Pines State Park. Once a white-pine lumber boomtown, it reinvented itself as an outdoors and military-training hub named for a fish that no longer swims here.

AppWT serves Grayling Charter Township and the surrounding Michigan area from Livonia, Michigan.

About Grayling Charter Township

Also known as. Canoe Capital of the World (Grayling area). Milltown (historic lumber-era name). Named for the grayling, a trout-family fish once native to the Au Sable River.

History. The township community was founded in 1914 by Danish immigrant timber baron Rasmus Hanson along the shores of Lake Margrethe, which he named after his wife Margrethe. It became a stop on the Michigan Central Railroad as part of Camp Hanson, which later grew into Camp Grayling. The wider Grayling area developed in the early 1870s as a mill town serving the surrounding white-pine forests; area names during the lumber era included AuSable, Forest, Crawford Station, and Milltown. The region is named after the Arctic grayling, a fish once abundant in the Au Sable River but extirpated from Michigan by 1936, largely due to logging that destroyed spawning grounds. In 1916 Rasmus Hanson donated 13,826 acres to the state, creating Michigan's first state-owned game preserve, land that became the core of Camp Grayling.

Local economy. Camp Grayling is a Michigan National Guard training facility spanning roughly 147,000 acres, described as the largest National Guard training site in the nation and the largest military installation east of the Mississippi River. Around 10,000 troops from the Army, Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy train at Camp Grayling annually, generating an estimated $20 million in local economic activity. Outdoor recreation and tourism anchor the economy, centered on canoeing, kayaking, fly fishing, and skiing across the Au Sable and Manistee river systems. The Grayling Fish Hatchery, founded in 1914, operated as a state hatchery until the mid-1960s and now runs as a private fish farm open to the public in summer.

Culture and community. The Au Sable River Canoe Marathon, run since 1947, starts in Grayling and covers about 120 miles overnight to Oscoda, billed as the longest nonstop canoe race in North America and part of canoe racing's Triple Crown. The annual AuSable River Festival coincides with the marathon on the last full weekend of July. Cross-country and downhill skiing are cultural staples; Hanson Hills opened as one of Michigan's earliest downhill ski areas. Fly fishing on the Au Sable, one of the Midwest's most celebrated trout streams, shapes local identity.

What makes Grayling Charter Township distinct. Grayling Charter Township is the second-largest charter township by land area in Michigan (after Ironwood Township) and the largest municipality by land area in the Lower Peninsula. The town is named for a fish that has been extinct in Michigan since 1936. Major early donors to the Grayling Fish Hatchery's grayling-restoration effort included Henry Ford, Edsel Ford, and Thomas Edison. The area is core habitat for the once-endangered Kirtland's warbler, which nests almost exclusively in young jack-pine stands like those around Grayling. Bear Archery founder Fred Bear operated his archery business in the Grayling area from 1947 to 1978. Novelist Jim Harrison, author of 'Legends of the Fall,' was born in Grayling.

Grayling Charter Township Landmarks and Local Life

• Hartwick Pines State Park - located within the township, preserves one of Michigan's last stands of old-growth eastern white pine
• Lake Margrethe - in the western part of the township within Camp Grayling, is a residential and recreational lake
• Hanson Hills Recreation Area - a roughly 1,000-acre sports park with ski runs and trails on Hanson's donated land
• Grayling Fish Hatchery - a historic hatchery-turned-fish-farm
• Crawford County Historical Museum - housed in a restored railroad depot with lumber-era exhibits
• Wellington Farm Park - a living-history farm depicting Depression-era rural life

What AppWT Web & AI Solutions Builds for Grayling Charter Township Businesses

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