State-recognized Cheese Capital of Michigan, a designation driven by Inez Wilson and the town's Pinconning cheese heritage, celebrated each summer with a CheeseTown festival source
Community character
Small Bay County city of about 1,204 residents covering 0.86 square miles roughly 1.5 miles west of Saginaw Bay in the Saginaw, Midland, and Bay City metropolitan area, founded as an 1872 lumber settlement on the Pinconning River, incorporated as a village in 1873, and made a city in 1935 source
Wilson's Cheese Shoppe and the giant Wilson mouse mascots
Cheese store on M-13 famous for two brown fiberglass mouse mascots holding yellow cheese wedges, one atop the shop and one roadside, created in 1965 by Inez Wilson to promote Pinconning cheese source
Pinconning cheese heritage
Birthplace of Pinconning cheese, a Colby variety developed after William Reid opened Pinconning Creamery in 1907, with a Kraft cheese plant operating from 1936 to 1993 source
Pinconning River
River that flows through the city and gives it its name, from the Ojibwe Opinikaaning meaning potato place, where George VanEtten and Henry Kaiser founded a lumber settlement in 1872 source
Doc Letchfield Park
City park at 301 North Street with soccer fields, baseball diamonds, tennis courts, a band shell, pavilions, and a natural playscape known as the Pinconning Nature Park source
