Welcome to Alpha ...
Although we found mention of Alpha during our research, we have little information about it.<1> Given the context of how Alpha was mentioned, we believe that it was a community rather than some type of landmark. We have done a cursory search and if it's a community, we haven't been able to find any evidence that it still exists..
While we are confident that Alpha was located in Benzie County, we don't know its actual location within the county.
We've added Alpha to our Gazetteer with the hope that we can develop more information. We would especially like to find the location of Alpha - knowing its coordinates, we can explore things like its relationship to neighboring communities, nearby cemeteries, etc. If you can help us with Alpha, please Contact Us.
Time Zone: The area where we believe that Alpha might be (or was) located is in the Eastern Time Zone (EST/EDT) and observes daylight saving time
Communities Also Named Alpha ...
Using our Gazetteer, we have found that there are two Michigan communities named Alpha: This one is located in Benzie County and the other is located in Iron County.
Beyond Michigan, there are 33 communities that are also named Alpha - they are located in Arkansas, California, Georgia, Idaho (2), Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas (2), Kentucky, Louisiana, Manitoba, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri (2), Nevada, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington (2), West Virginia (2) and Wisconsin.
For more information, see our Tidbits & Trivia Page for Alpha.
Other Roadside Stops ...
Off-the-Road Links ...
The official website for Benzie County: www.berriencounty.org/
The official website for State of Michigan: https://www.michigan.gov/
Footnotes ...
| <1> | If we encounter the name of what might be a community, our methodology is to add that name to our Gazetteer. For example, we might find a sentence like "He went south past Alpha and then turned east". While Alpha could be some kind of landmark, we think that it's more likely to be a community. We've added Alpha as a placeholder with the hope that we'll be able to add more information in the future. Just as a reminder: Our definition of a community is rather broad and includes those places (or areas) where several families lived and had a name which identified that place. For example, you might hear somebody say that they are going over to Bird Creek to see Pete ... Bird Creek is just a gas station and a couple of homes at the crossroads. While it might not be on the map, everybody in the area knows it by that name. Places of interest include buildings at a crossroad, several families clustered in a hollow or maybe the location of a way station. It also includes places like mines, lumber camps, ferry crossings, etc. The community might still exist, is now gone or only existed for just a short period of time. Also keep in mind that Alpha could have been on the original document by mistake, misspelled, the original/alternate name of a community that we've listed elsewhere or was placed in the wrong county. Sometimes a post office or train station would have a different name than the community where it's located, so two names might be referring to the same community - we're working to straighten it all out. |