"The Front Door to Michigan's Thumb"

Within a region of pine forests, there sat amongst the pines a little post office by the name of Pinery that opened in May 1852. It closed in September and re-opened in August 1853.

Not far away in St. Clair County, a judge named DeWitt Walker rounded up a group of guys from the town on Romeo, found a section of unused land, and platted it in 1857.

In January 1858, the little Pinery post office was transferred to this new settlement and was to be re-named. What to call it? The judge decided on the name Ccapac, named after an Inca Indian emperor named Huayna Ccapac. Once the Pinery post office operations had been switched, the new post office was re-named “Capac”, dropping the first letter of the original title.

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Called “The Front Door to Michigan’s Thumb”, Capac's most famous resident was Preston Tucker, born near Capac in 1903. Tucker was the designer of the 1948 Tucker Sedan. Scroll down to see a few "Then-and-now" photos of the town...