There are several things to know about Cheboygan City's population. The first is that the city was founded as a lumbering town in 1844, and has attracted a wide variety of people from various places. Early Cheboygan was reminiscent of Wild West towns, with young men in search of work in the white pine forests. There, they refueled their spirits at the local watering holes and worked out their differences with weathered fists.
While Cheboygan City has remained relatively small in size over the years, it has experienced a dramatic decline in population since the mid-20th century. Between 2006 and today, the population of Cheboygan, MI dropped by 7.6 percent. The city also lost 16 percent of jobs and 22 percent of businesses. Livingston, MI, is experiencing a decline in autoworkers from downstate. Previously, many retired General Motors workers purchased retirement homes in the city. Today, you can still find these retired workers in the city, but Zany Kitchen will close after Labor Day.
The city's name was derived from the Ojibwe language. Before the 1840 settlement boom, the town had five grade schools, but the number of students in its high school has dropped from 780 to 559 in the past decade. The average age of residents of Cheboygan County is 55. The town sits on the mouth of the Cheboygan River, about 20 minutes from the Mackinac Bridge.