Mellen Township is a

civil township A civil township is a widely used unit of local government in the United States that is subordinate to a County (United States), county, most often in the northern and midwestern parts of the country. The term town is used in New England town, Ne ...

of Menominee County in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its so ...

Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...

. The population was 1,109 at the 2020 census. It is named after pioneer settler Mellen Smith (1829–1905), who served as the first

postmaster A postmaster is the head of an individual post office, responsible for all postal activities in a specific post office. When a postmaster is responsible for an entire mail distribution organization (usually sponsored by a national government), ...

at Wallace.Romig, Walter. 1986. ''Michigan Place Names''. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, p. 580.

Geography

Mellen Township is in southern Menominee County, bordered to the west by the

Menominee River The Menominee River is a river in northwestern Michigan and northeastern Wisconsin in the United States. It is approximately long,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed Dec ...

, across which is Marinette County in the state of

Wisconsin Wisconsin ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest of the United States. It borders Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michig ...

U.S. Route 41 U.S. Route 41, also U.S. Highway 41 (US 41), is a major north–south United States Numbered Highway that runs from Miami, Florida, to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Until 1949, the part in southern Florida, from Naples to Miam ...

crosses the township, leading south to

Menominee The Menominee ( ; meaning ''"Menominee People"'', also spelled Menomini, derived from the Ojibwe language word for "Wild Rice People"; known as ''Mamaceqtaw'', "the people", in the Menominee language) are a federally recognized tribe of Na ...

, the

county seat A county seat is an administrative center, seat of government, or capital city of a county or parish (administrative division), civil parish. The term is in use in five countries: Canada, China, Hungary, Romania, and the United States. An equiva ...

, and north to Powers. According to the

United States Census Bureau The United States Census Bureau, officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the Federal statistical system, U.S. federal statistical system, responsible for producing data about the American people and American economy, econ ...

, the township has a total area of , of which are land and , or 1.80%, are water.

Communities

* Ingalls is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a parcel of land that is not governed by a local general-purpose municipal corporation. (At p. 178.) They may be governed or serviced by an encompassing unit (such as a county) or another branch of the state (such as th ...

along U.S. Highway 41, south of Stephenson. Ingalls has a

post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letter (message), letters and parcel (package), parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post o ...

with ZIP code 49848.ZIP Code Lookup
United States Post Office *Wallace is an

located north of

on US Highway 41. It is a small village with the DeYoung Family Zoo, a used-car dealership, a tavern, lumber yard, post office, ice maker, wood businesses, grocery market, service station, and a liquidator store. There are also three churches: Country Bible Church (non-denominational), a Covenant Church, and a Lutheran church. The Mellen Elementary School is also located in Wallace. Wallace was originally called "Wallace's Siding" after Wallace Sutherland (1858–1890), who was assigned to the railroad depot. It was then shorted to "Wallace" by the time the post office was established in 1877. On April 12, 1931, Wallace suffered a fire that destroyed most of the village. Wallace has a

with ZIP code 49893.

Demographics

As of the

census A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...

of 2000, there were 1,260 people, 520 households, and 368 families residing in the township. In 2020, there were 1,109 people in the township.

Notable people

* John Noppenberg, American football player

References

{{authority control Townships in Menominee County, Michigan Marinette micropolitan area Townships in Michigan