Felch 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 Dickinson 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, ...

, named in honor of

Alpheus Felch Alpheus Felch (September 28, 1804June 13, 1896) was the fifth governor of Michigan and U.S. Senator from Michigan. Early life Felch was born in Limerick (in modern-day Maine, then a part of Massachusetts). He was left an orphan at the age of th ...

. The population was 687 at the 2020 census.

Geography

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, of it is land and of it (0.47%) is water.

Communities

There are no incorporated municipalities in the township. *Felch 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 ...

on M-69 at . Felch was a station on a branch of the

Chicago and North Western Railway The Chicago and North Western was a Railroad classes#Class I, Class I railroad in the Midwestern United States. It was also known as the "North Western". The railroad operated more than of track at the turn of the 20th century, and over of t ...

. A post office has been in operation there since 1906. *Metropolitan was a thriving village established just after 1880 to exploit the iron ore in the nearby Metropolitan Mine. Metropolitan was about one mile west of Felch and was the last station on a branch of the Chicago and North Western Railway coming west from Escanaba. The village 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 by the Metropolitan Mining Company in 1881. A post office was in operation there from 1881 until 1963. The present Zion Lutheran Church of Metropolitan sits almost exactly on the site of the old village, which is now a string of farms along the country roads. Metropolitan was sometimes referred to as Milltown and Farmertown. *Theodore is an unincorporated community on M-69 about half a mile northwest of Felch at . It was

ted for the Lake Superior Ship Canal, Railway & Iron Company in 1881 by J.A. Van Clive. *Felch Mountain is an unincorporated community on M-69 about half a mile northwest of Felch. It is immediately adjacent to, and east of, Theodore. Both Theodore and Felch Mountain are located on a steep hill north of M-69, while Felch and Metropolitan are located in the lower land south of M-69. *Spruce was a station on the

at near the junction of Lucas Rd with M-69

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 726 people, 274 households, and 204 families residing in the township. By 2020, there were 687 people in the township.

References

{{authority control Townships in Dickinson County, Michigan Iron Mountain micropolitan area Townships in Michigan