With the humble beginning of two historic buildings acquired in 1986, the Montcalm Heritage Village has grown to include more than 25 original and reconstructed structures and hundreds of artifacts from local areas depicting life in Michigan at the turn of the 1800s to 1900s. The Village comes alive during the annual Heritage Festival the first weekend in August and includes a one-room schoolhouse reenactment, a working blacksmith shop, and a civil war encampment.

The Story of Heritage Village, however, is not simply a story of buildings, amazing as they are. This is a story about...