Harrison Township

Harrison Township is where Macomb County meets the water — and there’s a lot of water. Roughly 40% of the township is Lake St. Clair, and the Clinton River empties into the lake right here. Formed all the way back in 1827, it spent its early life as farmland dotted with a few hopeful “lost villages” — including a spot called Liverpool, where a settler tried (and failed) to build a port to rival Liverpool, England.

What it became instead is metro Detroit’s boating heart. The shoreline is lined with marinas, yacht harbors, and waterfront restaurants, and on a summer weekend the lake fills with boats. The crown jewel for everyone else is Lake St. Clair Metropark — still called “Metro Beach” by basically every local who grew up here — a huge waterfront park with a beach, marina, trails, and free summer concerts. And then there’s Selfridge: an Air National Guard base built in 1917, one of the oldest military airfields in the country, whose periodic open-house air shows have thrilled generations of Michigan kids craning their necks at the sky. It’s not a walkable-downtown kind of place — it’s a get-on-the-water, watch-the-jets, spend-the-whole-summer-outside kind of place.

Harrison Township’s most famous resident is hockey legend Chris Chelios — the Hall of Fame defenseman and Detroit Red Wings icon has long called the township home. Fitting for a place this devoted to the water and the outdoors: its standout local is a guy who spent 26 seasons being tough as nails on the ice. Kid Rock is also known to keep a foot in the area. Mostly, though, the “locals” here are the boaters, the beachgoers, and the families who’ve been coming to Metro Beach for generations.