Agnew, Michigan is a tiny

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 ...

located at at the intersection of U.S. Highway 31 (US 31) and M-45 in Grand Haven Charter Township of Ottawa 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, ...

History

Agnew was first known as "Johnsville" after John Behm, who was one of the early settlers in the area in the 1860s. A post office named Johnsville operated there from 1870 to 1875. It reopened in 1878 and was renamed "Agnew" on December 23, 1887. It was

plat In the United States, a plat ( or ) (plan) is a cadastral map, drawn to scale, showing the divisions of a piece of land. United States General Land Office surveyors drafted township plats of Public Lands Survey System, Public Lands Surveys to ...

ted with the name "Village of Agnew" on May 16, 1889, by Edward E. Stites.Potts, Hiram
''Historical and business compendium of Ottawa county, Michigan''
Grand Haven: Potts & Conger, 1892. pp. 49-50 The settlement was named for JKV Agnew, a superintendent of the Chicago and West Michigan Railway, which had a station by that name there. The successor railroad,

Pere Marquette Railway The Pere Marquette Railway was a railroad that operated in the Great Lakes (North America), Great Lakes region of the United States and southern parts of Ontario in Canada. It had trackage in the states of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and the Canadi ...

, closed the station and in 1952, the

Michigan Department of Transportation The Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) is a constitutional government principal department of the US state of Michigan. The primary purpose of MDOT is to maintain the Michigan State Trunkline Highway System which includes all Interst ...

determined it was easier to move the 12 remaining buildings to allow construction of US 31.

References

Unincorporated communities in Ottawa County, Michigan Populated places established in 1870 Unincorporated communities in Michigan 1870 establishments in Michigan {{OttawaCountyMI-geo-stub