Emmet County is a county located in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is the northernmost county in the Lower Peninsula. As of the 2020 census, the population was 34,112, making it the second-most populous county in Northern Michigan. The county seat is Petoskey, which is also the county's largest city.
Emmet County Building
Most of present day Charlevoix County was originally part of Emmet County.
Emmet County is at the lower center-left, Cheboygan County is at the lower right, and Mackinac County is above both of them; taken April 10, 2022, from the International Space Station.
The Tunnel of Trees, along M-119 north of Harbor Springs.
Northern Michigan, also known as Northern Lower Michigan, is a region of the U.S. state of Michigan. A popular tourist destination, it is home to several small- to medium-sized cities, extensive state and national forests, lakes and rivers, and a large portion of Great Lakes shoreline. The region has a significant seasonal population much like other regions that depend on tourism as their main industry. Northern Lower Michigan is distinct from the more northerly Upper Peninsula and Isle Royale, which are also located in "northern" Michigan. In the northernmost 21 counties in the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, the total population of the region is 506,658 people.
After taking refuge at Michilimackinac during the Beaver Wars, many Wyandot (Huron) migrated to the areas of Detroit, Windsor, and northern Ohio in the early 18th century.
In the 1836 Treaty of Washington, Michigan tribes ceded claims to lands in the yellow (Royce No. 205) area above – covering eastern Upper Peninsula and the northwestern Lower Peninsula of Michigan to the United States – and opened it to settlement.
Passenger pigeons were hunted to extinction sometime after the 1870s, with the last large nesting in Petoskey, Michigan, in 1878.
Lumbering practices destroyed Arctic Grayling breeding grounds in rivers and led to their slow decline, and the sport fishing industry also contributed to the grayling's eventual disappearance from Northern Michigan.