Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Rose City, MI

Rose City is a small city in Ogemaw County in Michigan's northern Lower Peninsula, and one of only two cities in the county, alongside West Branch, the county seat.

The community began as a lumbering town called Churchill, first settled in 1875 half a mile from the present site; Hiram Hodge was its first resident and built a hotel there.

Allan S. Rose, who arrived with his father and two brothers from New York in 1875, formed the French and Rose Land Company and built a general store, settler cabins and boarding houses amid the giant pine timber operations.

A post office opened under the name Churchill on September 8, 1875; on July 23, 1892, the settlement moved east and the post office was renamed Rose City in honor of the Rose family.

In 1910 a major fire swept through Rose City and destroyed its entire business section — thirty buildings — within an hour, effectively ending the town's era as a lumbering center because many businesses never rebuilt.

The 1910 fire site and the city were designated Michigan State Historic Sites in 2002, and a double-sided marker about Rose City and the Big Fire stands in Rose City Park.

Rose City was once nicknamed 'The Home of Artesian Wells' because so many artesian wells fed its water supply, and artesian wells still figure in its water system today.

Houghton Creek, a tributary of the Rifle River, runs through part of the city, the Rifle River State Recreation Area lies about three miles east, and there are 75 lakes within 15 miles of the city limits.

Rose City had 577 residents at the 2020 census, down from a modern peak of 721 in 2000; at the 2010 census its 653 residents lived in 238 households.

Since October 1962, Rose City students have attended the combined West Branch-Rose City Area Schools district, traveling to Ogemaw Heights High School in West Branch.