Hoytville, Michigan

Hoytville's a little burg, a mile south of Mulliken, at the corner of Mulliken Road and Saginaw Highway. The town was founded in 1856 (as Centre, apparently). Henry Hoyt's store--I imagine that's the large building in this picture--opened in 1869, and the community was renamed to honor Dr. Hoyt (who was also postmaster at the time) in 1876.

I've always assumed Saginaw Highway--an extension of Lansing's Saginaw Street--was the local main road at the time of Hoytville's settlement. Saginaw's a dirt two-lane out this way; the state highway runs parallel a mile north, defining the southern edge of Mulliken (a topic I'm planning to discuss on March eleventh).

In 1888 the Detroit, Lansing, and Northern Railroad (CSX, now) laid its tracks a mile and a half north of Hoytville, and apparently many of the town's residents bought land from Ed Potter and moved to the new village of Mulliken. But Hoytville's survived to this day as a small settlement.

I posted a similarly-framed--but otherwise very different--photo to 366 Snaps on December 3. That photo's outtake has more information about the settlement.

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Last March 7th's 366 Snaps photo was also of Hoytville, as it looks when you approach from the east. (My February 6 outtake is a similar photo.) I've always liked that farm's general look.

I notice I tagged the project photo "been wanting to take this photo for years."

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This photograph is an outtake from my 2012 photo-a-day project, 366 Snaps.

Number of project photos taken: 39 (but see my comments below)
Title of "roll:" Village Green & Delta Square-Flowers! [Village Green and Delta Square are apartment complexes where I used to live--that's a different project. and the flowers were the year's first crocuses.]
Other photos taken on 3/7/2012: none. but the "project" folder includes many pics that weren't intended for the 366 project.