This Obscure Michigan Location is the Westernmost Point of the Eastern Time Zone

Unless you live in the Western Upper Peninsula, it can be easy to forget that a portion of Michigan is in the Central Time Zone. These 4 Michigan counties that border Wisconsin also give Michigan a geographic oddity - the westernmost point of the Eastern Time Zone in the United States.

The exact location would be the Ontonagon/Gogebic county line at Lake Superior. As near as we can figure, it's about 800 feet south of the mouth of the Carp River where the county line takes an odd jog to the west as described by the Twelve Mile Circle blog:

READ MORE: In Terms of Time Zones, West Michigan Is the Perfect Location in all of America

the time zone follows the western border of Ontonagon County in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The border inexplicably cuts left just as it approaches Lake Superior’s shoreline and the point can be fixed where Ontonagon and Gogebic Counties hit the lakeshore

That point, we place at 46°45'57.0"N 89°53'15.8"W. If you did want to pay a visit to the location, it wouldn't be easy. The spot is several miles from the nearest road - Boundary Road which runs, as the name implies, along the southern boundary of the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park. It's a like up the Pinkerton Trail for several miles through terrain best described as 'very buggy' due to the marshland.

And you'd want a GPS with you so you'd know you hit the exact coordinates as there would almost assuredly be no signage to indicate you're crossing county and time zone lines. But if you do make the trek, you can assure yourself that you are in a nearly class by yourself of people who can claim they've visited the westernmost spot in the Eastern Time Zone.

Twelve Mile Circle has a great piece on the extreme points in our time zones here.