Kingsford is a town of 5,100 in Michigan’s Upper Penisula, right on the border with Wisconsin. It’s got a paper mill, a foundry, and a ski resort (with a famous ski jump). Not much around, but it does look very pretty.
The town came to being in 1923, and was named after real estate agent EG Kingsford. He had bought up some acreage for the Ford Motor Company, to supply & process wood parts for automobiles, esp. woody station wagons.
Hence the flivvers. If you’re not familiar with that rather out-of-date term, it’s basically the same as “jalopy” or “beater.” The term itself is of unknown origin.
The town is also the source of Kingsford Charcoal, originally made from leftover wood from the Ford plant. It was originally called Ford Charcoal, but changed its name to Kingsford when Ford got out of the business and some local business leaders bought in. I’m sure everyone out there has used that stuff at sometime or other.
Local teams were originally called the Fords. A sportswriter, desperate for a little elegant variation I would imagine, coined them the Flivvers, which seems to have stuck.
The high school has a restored Model T in the lobby. They have redone it, though, in the school colors of blue and yellow.
The school itself has not quite 600 students. They play their outdoor sports at the awesomely alliterative Flivver Field.
Here the site of a Model-T club meetup
Not too surprisingly, winter sports are quite popular.
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