Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup in Kingsford, MI

Kingsford is a city in Dickinson County in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, on the Wisconsin border.

It is one of the youngest communities in the area: Kingsford originated in 1920 when Henry Ford built a sawmill and body-parts plant in the Upper Peninsula to turn northern hardwood into wooden automobile components.

The city was named for Edward G. Kingsford, the Ford executive and dealer who facilitated Ford's purchase of some 313,447 acres of Upper Peninsula timberland.

Construction of the Ford plant employed more than 3,000 people in its first year, and Ford-related employment in the area peaked at about 7,500 workers in 1925.

Ford built more than 100 homes for employees in what is still called the Ford Addition neighborhood.

Ford Airport, the area's only airport, served Ford's World War II glider factory, where wooden cargo gliders were built for the war effort.

Kingsford was incorporated as a village in 1924, under a charter approved December 29, 1923, and as a city in 1947, under a charter approved August 7, 1947.

Henry Ford II closed the sawmill and parts plant in 1951, but the chemical operation that recovered wood byproducts became the Kingsford Chemical Company — the charcoal briquette business that still carries the city's name — and operated in Kingsford until 1961 as a division of Clorox.

The 2020 census counted 5,139 residents in Kingsford, almost unchanged from 5,133 in 2010, and Census survey estimates show its households averaging about 2.20 people.

Kingsford's Ford-era past is still visible today in the company-built houses of the Ford Addition and in the famous charcoal brand that still carries the city's name.