Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Oscoda, MI

Oscoda is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Iosco County, located at the mouth of the Au Sable River along Lake Huron, within Au Sable and Oscoda townships.

The area was first settled in 1867, when the firm of Smith, Kelley & Dwight purchased land across the Au Sable River from the village of Au Sable and platted the community.

The name Oscoda was coined by Henry Schoolcraft from Native words meaning a pebbly prairie, and the Oscoda post office was established under that name on July 1, 1875.

Oscoda incorporated as a village in 1885, but a large forest fire in 1911 nearly destroyed it, and the village surrendered its charter in 1919 and was absorbed into Oscoda Township.

The State of Michigan has designated Oscoda as the official home of Paul Bunyan, because the earliest documented Paul Bunyan stories were published in the Oscoda Press on August 10, 1906, by James MacGillivray.

The Lumberman's Monument, dedicated in 1932 in honor of the early lumberjacks who first populated the area, stands nearby along the Au Sable River.

Wurtsmith Air Force Base operated just outside the community from 1923 to 1993, and in its later years some 3,000 personnel were stationed there even though the CDP itself counted only about a thousand residents.

The 2020 census counted 916 people in Oscoda, up slightly from 903 in 2010, living in 423 households.

Oscoda's housing has a strong seasonal flavor: of its 604 housing units in 2020, 121 - about one in five - were held for seasonal or recreational use.

Oscoda packs its residents into just 0.9 square miles of land, and its median age of 49.6 years at the 2020 census was nearly a decade older than Michigan's median of 40.1.