Owosso and the Shiawassee River Valley

A castle on a riverbank and a steam locomotive that played itself in a Christmas movie are not the two things you expect to find within four blocks of each other in a mid-Michigan county seat. Owosso has both, plus a working dirt track, a restored 1903 union station twenty minutes south, and one of Michigan's great wildlife refuges at the edge of the radius. Everything here sits inside forty-five minutes of downtown.

Curwood Castle

James Oliver Curwood was born in Owosso and became one of America's most widely read adventure novelists, and an early and serious advocate for conservation. In 1923 he completed a small replica of a Norman chateau on the bank of the Shiawassee River and used it as his writing studio.

It is a castle in the honest sense: turrets, stone, a battlement line, and a river below it. It is not large, and its scale is part of the charm. It is now a museum operated as part of the city's historical holdings, and it anchors Curwood Castle Park.

The Elias Comstock Cabin sits nearby, giving you the other end of the town's history in one short walk: the first settler's log house and the novelist's fantasy chateau, a few hundred feet apart.

The Curwood Festival

Every June the city holds the Curwood Festival, which draws thousands for a parade, a carnival, craft and food vendors, and entertainment across several days. One of its better traditions is River Daze, a downriver race that was revived from earlier versions of the festival.

It is a genuine community festival rather than a tourism product, which is exactly why it is worth timing a visit around. Lodging in Owosso is limited, so book early or plan on staying in Flint or Lansing, both under an hour away.

The Steam Railroading Institute

At 405 South Washington Street, the Steam Railroading Institute occupies the site of the former Ann Arbor Railroad steam shops and roundhouse. The organization was founded in 1969 as the Michigan State University Railroad Club and has grown into one of the more serious operating steam preservation groups in the Midwest.

It opens to the public on select days, generally spring through early fall, with tours through the locomotives, rolling stock, and shop buildings. The volunteers are the attraction as much as the equipment; this is a working shop and they will explain what they are doing.

Check the schedule before you drive. Open days are specific dates, not standing hours, and the calendar moves with the excursion season.

Pere Marquette 1225

The 1225 is an N-1 class 2-8-4 Berkshire-type steam locomotive built in October 1941 by the Lima Locomotive Works in Lima, Ohio. It is based at Owosso and operated by the Steam Railroading Institute in excursion service on the Great Lakes Central Railroad.

Its film credit is real and specific, and it is worth stating precisely because it is usually stated loosely. The locomotive's blueprints were donated to the Michigan State University Railroad Club by Hank Truer and provided to Warner Bros. in 2002, forming the basis for the computer-generated locomotive in the 2004 film The Polar Express. The 1225's sounds were also recorded and used in the film. Chris Van Allsburg, who wrote the 1985 book, remembered seeing the engine on the MSU campus as a child.

The 1225 runs seasonal excursions, including North Pole Express trips on weekends between Thanksgiving and mid-December. Steam locomotives are mechanical objects with maintenance cycles, and this one has been in and out of service over the years, so confirm with the Institute that it is running on your dates before you build a trip around it.

Arts, Theater, and the Speedway

The Shiawassee Arts Center sits in Curwood Castle Park overlooking the river and programs exhibitions and classes year-round. It is free to walk through and it is a natural pairing with the castle since they share a parking lot.

The Owosso Community Players perform at the Lebowsky Center, producing several musicals and several plays each season plus a children's summer workshop, and bringing in outside artists. For a town this size that is an unusually full season.

Owosso Speedway runs weekly dirt track racing through the summer. If you have never been to a short-track race, this is a good and inexpensive introduction, and it is loud in the way it is supposed to be.

Durand Union Station

Twenty minutes south, Durand holds one of the finest railroad buildings in Michigan. The Grand Trunk Western built the Richardsonian Romanesque station in 1903 to serve what had become the largest railroad center in the state outside Detroit. Fire nearly destroyed it soon after it opened, and a near-replica was completed within six months.

At its peak in the 1910s and 1920s the depot handled dozens of passenger and mail trains and well over a hundred freight movements a day. Sources disagree on the exact counts, which tells you something about how busy it was.

It houses the Michigan Railroad History Museum today, with photographs, artifacts, and displays, and it is still a working station. The diamond crossing outside is a legitimate railfan destination in its own right.

Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge

About forty minutes northeast, near where the Shiawassee joins the other rivers feeding Saginaw Bay, the Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge protects roughly 9,870 acres of bottomland hardwood forest, marsh, pool, grassland, and cropland. It is a designated Important Bird Area of global significance for migratory waterfowl.

There are more than twelve miles of trails. The Wildlife Drive, six and a half miles, is open June 1 through September 30 during daylight hours. Observation towers and platforms with mounted spotting scopes give you close views of bald eagles and white-tailed deer without needing to carry optics.

April and May are the best months for spring migration; September and October for fall. This is at the outer edge of a forty-five-minute drive from Owosso and it earns the drive.

How to Structure It

Two nights. Owosso itself has limited lodging, and Flint, Lansing, and Saginaw are each within about forty-five minutes if you want more choice.

A workable shape: arrive and walk Curwood Castle Park, the castle, the Comstock cabin, and the arts center, which is one continuous stroll. Give the next morning to the Steam Railroading Institute if it is an open day, and the afternoon to Durand Union Station. Save the refuge for an early second morning, when the birds are actually moving.

Corunna, the county seat, is five minutes east. Chesaning is twenty-five minutes northwest. Both are worth a short stop if you are the sort of traveler who likes seeing what a county looks like rather than just its largest town.