I am willing to bet many of you reading this have passed through Michigan’s smallest city at one time or another.
If I am wrong about that bet, well, I have been wrong before.
You can ask my bride, Vicky.
Omer, Michigan, sits along US-23 not far from the Lake Huron shoreline, tucked between Bay City and Standish. It is the sort of place you can drive through without realizing you have just passed through an incorporated city.
In fact, you may remember the sign better than the town.
OMER — MICHIGAN’S SMALLEST CITY.
According to the 2020 Census, just 274 people called Omer home. That makes its claim to being Michigan’s smallest city by population considerably more than roadside bragging.
But I remember Omer for another reason.
Ice cream.
And sometimes that is reason enough to slow down.
We Were Always Passing Through Omer
For years, whenever we headed toward the cabin, Omer was simply part of the drive.
You know how that happens. Certain towns become markers along a familiar route. You know the curve in the road, the gas station, the building that has been there forever and the place where somebody in the vehicle inevitably asks whether we are stopping.
In Omer, that place was Sundaes Afternoon.
The ice cream shop sits at 406 Center Road, and when we were traveling through town, stopping for ice cream could turn Omer from a place along the way into part of the trip.
There is something wonderfully uncomplicated about that.
You don’t always need a nationally recognized attraction to create a memory. Sometimes all it takes is an ice cream cone and enough sense not to be in such a hurry that you drive past it.
And Omer has always been easy to drive past.
A City That Doesn’t Take Long to See
Drive into Omer and you almost immediately understand how it earned its reputation.
There is a post office. City hall and the library share a building. There is a Dollar General—because apparently even Michigan’s smallest city needs one of those.
The Omer Masonic Hall stands as another reminder that this little community once expected more people to be gathering here.
Then there is the Rifle River.
That is where the story changes.
Omer may be small today, but it wasn’t created simply to become an interesting sign along US-23.
Its reason for being was the river.
Before Omer Was Omer
The community began during Michigan’s lumbering era in the 1860s and was originally known as Rifle River Mills.
George Gorie and George Carscallen were among the men associated with its early development. When Carscallen wanted to call the community Homer, there was a problem: Michigan already had a Homer in Calhoun County.
The solution apparently didn’t require a committee, consultants or a marketing study.
Drop the H.
Homer became Omer.
I rather like that story.
The Rifle River gave the settlement purpose. Timber, mills and transportation brought activity, business and people. Omer eventually had hotels, stores, saloons and the other businesses you would expect in a growing Michigan lumber community.
For a period, it even served as the county seat of Arenac County.
It must have been difficult for someone standing in that Omer to imagine what the city would someday become.
But Michigan’s old lumber towns have taught us that prosperity doesn’t always stay where it started.
Omer had more than changing industry working against it. A devastating fire in 1914 destroyed a substantial portion of the community. Flooding followed two years later, damaging bridges and disrupting the connections on which a small town depended.
Buildings can be rebuilt.
Economies are harder.
Omer continued, but it did so on a much smaller scale.
And perhaps that is the part of its story I find most interesting.
It continued.
The Rifle River Never Left
You can remove a mill. A business can close. A railroad can change. People can move away.
The river doesn’t particularly care.
The Rifle River still passes through Omer much as it did when the first settlers arrived. Today, instead of moving logs and helping power an economy, it attracts canoeists, kayakers and fishermen.
And every spring, the river gives Michigan’s smallest city a chance to become considerably less quiet.
Suckerfest is coming.
Suckerfest: When Michigan’s Smallest City Gets Busy
The annual spring sucker run has become part of Omer’s identity.
White suckers move upstream from the Lake Huron watershed into tributaries such as the Rifle River to spawn, and generations of fishermen have known what that means.
Time to go fishing.
What began as something practical—spring fishing could put food on the table—developed into a community tradition. Today, Omer Suckerfest mixes fishing with the sort of small-town gathering that makes Michigan’s spring traditions so enjoyable.
There may be a fishing tournament, weigh-ins, food, vendors and activities surrounding the event, but the river remains the reason everyone is there.
And Mother Nature still controls the schedule.
Water temperature, river flow and Michigan’s famously unpredictable spring weather affect the sucker run. Anyone planning a special trip for Suckerfest should check the current year’s dates and conditions rather than assuming the fish have looked at the calendar.
For those of us traveling by RV, there is another consideration.
Early spring in Michigan can mean sunshine and shirtsleeves one afternoon and frozen water hoses the next morning. If you’re camping while attending Suckerfest, this isn’t the weekend to assume winter has packed its bags simply because the calendar says spring.
But there is something about people lining a riverbank on a cold Michigan morning, fishing rods in hand, waiting for a sucker to bite that seems to fit Omer perfectly.
Then There Was the Canoeist Who Changed Michigan Law
The Rifle River also gave Omer one of the stranger footnotes in Michigan legal history.
In 1998, Timothy Boomer was canoeing on the river when he fell into the water and reportedly let loose with language that was considerably more colorful than the scenery.
Unfortunately for Boomer, a woman and two children heard him.
Michigan still had an old law on the books prohibiting indecent, immoral, vulgar or insulting language in the presence or hearing of women or children. Boomer was prosecuted and convicted.
What might have remained an amusing local story became a serious constitutional case.
In 2002, the Michigan Court of Appeals reversed his conviction and ruled the statute unconstitutionally vague. (Michigan Courts)
Think about that for a moment.
Michigan’s smallest city, a canoe, a cold river and a man who apparently had a few choice words about falling into it helped bring down a law whose origins stretched back to 1897.
Omer may be small.
Its stories aren’t necessarily so.
Two Bridges Worth Noticing
If you enjoy old bridges—and I admit that places like these tend to catch my attention—Omer and the surrounding Rifle River area have two worth knowing about.
The Omer Railroad Bridge is a metal, eight-panel, rivet-connected Warren pony truss crossing the Rifle River. Its precise construction date isn’t known, but it is believed to date from the late 1800s, possibly the late 1880s or 1890s. The abutments underwent substantial repairs in 1918. HistoricBridges.org considers it a rare surviving example of a Michigan railroad pony truss and potentially one of the state’s oldest surviving rivet-connected truss bridges. (Historic Bridges)
That rusty steel doesn’t look fancy.
It doesn’t need to.
Stand there and imagine trains crossing the Rifle River when Omer was a very different community, and suddenly an old bridge becomes part of the story rather than simply an old piece of iron.
The Hickory Island Road Bridge offers another look at an earlier era. It is a 128-foot, pin-connected Pratt through truss over the Rifle River. Its exact origins are uncertain, and there is evidence supporting the local story that the bridge may have been relocated from somewhere else. Today it is closed to vehicles but remains available for viewing and pedestrian use. (Historic Bridges)
I like the uncertainty.
Sometimes history doesn’t leave us a neatly labeled folder explaining everything.
Sometimes it leaves us a bridge.
Wait a Minute—How Small Is “Smallest”?
Now we have a problem.
Or perhaps we have exactly the sort of unnecessary Michigan trivia I enjoy.
Omer is known as Michigan’s smallest city by population.
But what if we forget population and pull out the measuring tape?
Then Omer loses.
If we include incorporated villages, tiny Ahmeek in the Upper Peninsula occupies only a fraction of a square mile.
If we stick strictly with incorporated cities and ask which is smallest geographically, Clarkston, in Oakland County, is smaller in land area than Omer.
So which one is Michigan’s smallest?
That depends upon the question.
Omer gets the population title.
Clarkston has the geographic city distinction.
Ahmeek enters the conversation when villages are included.
Does any of this matter?
Probably not.
Do I find it interesting?
Absolutely.
Maybe I am a little odd that way, but I enjoy finding places most people pass without a second thought. Sometimes the insignificant-looking dot on the map has the better story.
Besides, nobody ever found a Cooper Shortcut by refusing to turn off the main road.
Around the Campfire
Is Omer worth making a special trip to see?
I wouldn’t build an entire Michigan vacation around it. That’s part of the charm. If you’re traveling US-23 along Michigan’s Lake Huron side, however, I would slow down and give Omer a little time. Enjoy an ice cream when Sundaes Afternoon is open, find the Rifle River, look for the old bridges and appreciate where you are.
Can we bring the RV through Omer?
Absolutely. US-23 is a major north-south route through this part of Michigan, and Omer is an easy pass-through for an RV traveler. Exploring smaller side roads around historic sites is another matter. With a large fifth-wheel, I would find an appropriate place to park before wandering onto unfamiliar local roads looking for bridges.
When should we visit?
For the quiet Omer I remember, summer makes an easy addition to a Lake Huron drive. If you want to see the community when it is anything but quiet, investigate the current dates for the spring Suckerfest. Because the fishing is tied to natural conditions, verify festival details and river conditions before making the drive.
What about Sundaes Afternoon?
The shop is at 406 Center Road in Omer. Because small seasonal businesses can change their days and hours, particularly outside the summer travel season, check before making an ice-cream emergency out of the situation. Current listings continue to identify the shop at that address. (Tripadvisor)
Final Thoughts
When we visited, Omer didn’t strike me as a place waiting to be rescued.
Nor did it feel like a community desperately trying to convince travelers that they should stop.
It simply felt settled.
That may be why I like it.
Omer once had mills, businesses, hotels and the importance that came with being a county seat. Fire destroyed buildings. Floodwaters damaged connections. The lumber era passed. Businesses disappeared. Generations moved elsewhere.
Yet Omer didn’t.
A few hundred people still call it home.
The Rifle River still runs through town.
Fishermen still return with the spring sucker run.
Those old steel bridges still stretch across the water.
And travelers like us still come rolling up US-23, perhaps headed somewhere much farther north, only to see that familiar sign:
Michigan’s Smallest City.
We could keep driving.
We have done plenty of that in our lives.
But sometimes the places that don’t give us much reason to stop are exactly the places where slowing down pays off.
Especially when there is an ice cream cone involved.
The Cooper Shortcut Camping Journey Trio 😊 PlusOne!
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