Livingston County is known for lots of things:
• It’s the home of Hell, which freezes over every so often.
• Its big summer festivals pay homage to melons and hot-air balloons.
• The infamous KISS concert of 1975.
• The Lingenfelter Collection of Cars, located in Brighton, is known as one of the premier car collections in the world, and it hosts a lot of charity events.
• Former Michigan Gov. George Romney is buried in Brighton.
• Being very, very, very Republican.
• Charlie Gehringer — nicknamed “The Mechanical Man” and who played 19 seasons for the Detroit Tigers and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1949 — was born on a farm in Iosco Township in 1903.
• Movie stars recently lived here. Melissa Gilbert, of “Little House on the Prairie” fame, and her husband, Timothy Busfield, producer, director and Emmy Award-winning actor, first moved to downtown Howell before moving to Genoa Township, and then relocating to New York in 2018.
• And who can forget that among Livingston County’s most-famous works of art is a statue at the Brighton Millpond — officially named “Decision Pending” — that’s actually (and affectionately) known far and wide as our very own “Ugly Naked Guy”? (With apologies to “Friends.”)
Now, Livingston County can safely wear the crown of richest county in Michigan, at least according to 24/7 Wall Street, which released its list this month.
Making the list isn’t new for Livingston County. When it first ascended 24/7’s richness throne in 2015, unseating Oakland County, our neighbors to the east took exception as to how the numbers were crunched — while 24/7 used median household income, Oakland preferred per capita — but we’ve not heard any complaints from Oakland County so far this year.
Here are the details:
Livingston County boasts a median household income of $78,430, which is a whopping 49 percent higher than the state’s median household income of $52,668, and 36 percent higher than that of the U.S. at $57,652.
In Livingston County, 34.7 percent of adults have bachelor’s degrees, compared to 28.1 percent of adults statewide.
