Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Mio, MI

Mio is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Oscoda County — it serves as the county seat even though, as an unincorporated place, it has no municipal government of its own.

Oscoda County is the only county in Michigan with no incorporated city or village at all, and with 8,219 residents in 2020 it was the least populous county in Michigan's Lower Peninsula.

Mio was founded in 1881 and was originally called 'Mioe,' the nickname of Marla Deyarmond, wife of town founder Henry Deyarmond; the post office opened as Mioe in 1882 and the name was shortened to Mio in 1883.

The 2020 census counted 1,690 people in the Mio CDP living in 771 households, spread across about 9 square miles where the community straddles Mentor, Big Creek and Elmer townships.

Mio holds Michigan's all-time state record for the highest temperature ever recorded: 112 °F on July 13, 1936, during the Dust Bowl heat wave.

The Oscoda County Courthouse in Mio, built in 1888, was destroyed by fire on May 5, 2016; a replacement courthouse was begun in 2019 and completed in February 2020.

The Mio Hydroelectric Plant, built in 1916 on the lower Au Sable River, was the first plant to use the patented 'conduit spillway' invented by Consumers Power engineer William W. Tefft.

Mio sits in the Au Sable River valley surrounded by the Huron National Forest, and the surrounding jack pine plains are prime habitat for the Kirtland's warbler, celebrated at the local Kirtland's Warbler Festival.

An Old Order Amish community has roots in Mio going back to 1900, and a new Amish settlement founded in 1970 is today the fourth-oldest Amish community in Michigan, with around 400 people in three church districts.

In the 1973 Michigan PBB contamination disaster, 1,300 of the more than 35,000 contaminated cattle that had to be destroyed were buried in a clay-lined pit in Mio.