Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Ontonagon, MI

Ontonagon is a village in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and the county seat of Ontonagon County — and it is the only incorporated place in the entire county.

Ontonagon was founded in 1843 and sits at the mouth of the Ontonagon River on the southern shore of Lake Superior.

Ontonagon County had just 5,816 residents at the 2020 census, making it Michigan's third-least-populous county.

Ontonagon is the westernmost incorporated community in the United States that observes the Eastern Time Zone, sitting on roughly the same line of longitude as Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

Ontonagon's population peaked at 2,432 in 1970 and has fallen in every census since, reaching 1,285 in 2020.

At the 2010 census Ontonagon had 717 households, and more than 41 percent of them were made up of a person living alone.

Industry in Ontonagon was long centered on the Smurfit-Stone Container production plant at the river mouth, until the plant closed in 2010.

Ontonagon averages about 193 inches of snowfall a year, according to 1981-2010 climate normals, thanks to lake-effect snow off Lake Superior.

US 45 has its northern terminus in downtown Ontonagon, and the state highways M-38 and M-64 also begin or end in the village.

Ontonagon was once the terminus of the Milwaukee Road's Chippewa-Hiawatha passenger train, but rail service ended in 1953 and the railroads have since been removed.