Hell

George Reeves settled here in 1838 and built a sawmill, a grist mill, a distillery and a tavern on the creek. The name became official on 13 October 1841.

Four accounts of the naming circulate. That two German travellers stepped from a stagecoach on a bright afternoon and said so schoen hell, so beautifully bright. That the wetland crossing, in the season of mosquitoes, was hellish. That Reeves paid farmers for their grain in whiskey from his own still, and their wives, asked where their husbands had gone, said he has gone to Hell again. That Reeves, asked what the settlement should be called, said he did not care, and they could name it Hell for all he cared.

Four accounts are on file. The Department has not adjudicated between them.

Reeves died in 1877. In 1924 his family sold the land to investors from Detroit, who raised the dam and enlarged the millpond into the body of water now recorded as Hiland Lake. The variant name on file is therefore not an alternative that was declined. It is a lake that did not exist when the place was named.