Even Lifelong Residents Don’t Understand the Bizarre Borderlines of this West Michigan City

Welcome to the Muskegon suburb of Norton Shores, the city that may have one of the oddest shapes in Michigan.

Located mainly south of Muskegon, Muskegon Heights and Roosevelt Park, there is a odd outcropping of Norton Shores that few can adequately explain.

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Take a look at the city's borders:

The notch of Norton Shores juts up between the cities of Roosevelt Park to the left (west) and Muskegon Heights to the right (east). So just how did that notch come to be? The answer is in the history of the city and its neighbors.

Norton Shores was once Norton Township. In 1968 the township became a city to fight off annexation by surrounding cities. The 1950s and 1960s saw a rush of townships upgrade themselves to cities to protect their borders.

It happened all around Michigan. This trend is what gave the Grand Rapids area Walker, Wyoming and Kentwood, the Kalamazoo area Portage and numerous Detroit suburbs: Dearborn Heights to protect itself from Dearborn and Rochester Hills from Rochester to name just two.

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Norton Shores is the youngest of its neighbors with Muskegon Heights dating back to the 1890s and Roosevelt Park to 1946.

So it was a strip of the former Norton Township that existed between those two cities that became a part of the new new city of Norton Shores

Street Signs Between the Muskegon Area Cities

Looking closer at the map of Norton Shores in this area, the strip between Roosevelt Park and Muskegon Heights is just two streets wide:

One way that some may be able to tell which community they are in are the street signs. The blades at each intersection are colored differently depending on which city a driver is in.

Norton Shores street signs are white on blue:

Muskegon Heights are a standard white on green:

Roosevelt Park signs are yellow on blue with the city's logo:

It's unlikely that municipal borders would change between these three Muskegon suburbs, so there will likely always be a little Norton Shores buffer between Muskegon Heights and Roosevelt Park.