Blood, Trauma, and Biohazard Cleanup in Stanwood, MI

Stanwood is a village in Mecosta County in Michigan's central Lower Peninsula, located within Mecosta Township about nine miles south of Big Rapids, the county seat.

Stanwood shares Michigan's all-time record high temperature: it reached 112 degrees Fahrenheit there on July 13, 1936, a state record it holds together with Mio.

The area was settled in the 1850s by John Bell, a logger from Ontario, Canada, whose logging community of Bell's Siding stood near the site of today's Morley Stanwood schools.

Local history holds that lumberman David M. Benjamin named the village Stanwood after his mother, Catharine C. Stanwood.

The village took shape in 1869 as the Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad built north through Mecosta County, and its post office opened in 1870.

Stanwood had 194 residents at the 2020 census; at the 2010 census its 211 residents lived in 76 households.

The whole village fits into just 0.24 square miles, with Macks Creek cutting across its southwest corner on its way to the Muskegon River.

Stanwood is best known today for the Nestlé Waters bottling plant in the village, which produces Ice Mountain and Nestlé Pure Life bottled water and began production in 2002.

The village's population peaked at 278 in the 1920 census, during the tail end of the lumber era, and has stayed near 200 ever since.

Baseball pitcher Ray Herbert, who played in the major leagues and was an American League All-Star, was born in Stanwood.