Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Belding, MI

Belding is a city in Ionia County, about 30 miles northeast of Grand Rapids, completely surrounded by Otisco Township.

Belding's first settler, Levi Broas, arrived in 1838, and the community was known at different times as Broas Rapids, Patterson Mills and — during logging days — Hog Wallow.

The town took the name Belding in 1871, honoring the Belding family, whose Belding Brothers and Company silk business dated to 1863.

Michigan's first silk mill was erected in Belding in 1886, and the city's silk mills operated until the early 1930s.

At its height, Belding ranked among the world's great silk cities — it was known as the 'Silk City of the World' and was described as the third-largest silk-producing city on earth.

The Belrockton, built in 1906 at a cost of $30,000 to house about 100 of the silk mills' young women workers, is the last of Belding's three mill dormitories and is now the Belding Museum, a Michigan Historical Site.

The 2020 census counted 5,938 people in Belding, living in 2,304 households.

The Alvah N. Belding Memorial Library, a gift of silk manufacturer Alvah Belding built in 1917–18, remains the city's public library.

Belding is the original home of the Gus Macker 3-on-3 basketball tournament, and at its peak, tournament weekends swelled the little city with roughly 100,000 visitors.

Novelist Betty Smith, author of 'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,' lived in Belding in 1923–24.