Odawa history records that Emmet County was thickly populated by indigenous peoples called the Mush-co-desh, which means "the prairie tribe".

They had an agrarian society and were said to have "shaped the land by making the woodland into prairie as they abandoned their old worn out gardens which formed grassy plains".

The Odawa of nearby L'Arbre Croche fished, hunted, and grew and gathered produce, including corn, squash, onions, cucumbers, turnips, cabbages, melon, and wild strawberries.

The canoes and food, including dried fish and meat and produce, supplied the fur traders who worked in the wilderness of the Great Lakes and the Upper Mississippi regions.

[7] They retained this influence into the 18th century, as French traders relied on them to take furs east from tribes they traded with to the north and west.

The Ottawa and Ojibwe tribes were the principal inhabitants of this area, extending across to Manitoulin Island and the Bruce Peninsula of Ontario, Canada.

From the Sainte-Anne log church, he served the French and later British residents, neighboring Native Americans, and visiting traders and explorers for almost 30 years.

[8] Du Jaunay split his time between the Sainte-Anne church and the Saint-Ignace at L’Arbre Croche mission in Cross Village, where he had a farm.

An Indian community on the lakeshore in the western part of the county continued to thrive after the British abandoned the fort.

[9][10] In 1847, a group of Mormons settled on nearby Beaver Island and established a "kingdom" led by "King" James Jesse Strang.

Due to Strang's influence, Mormons came to dominate county government, causing an exodus of many non-Mormon settlers to neighboring areas.

Due to their influence, in February 1858, the State Legislature passed an act establishing Mackinaw City as the county seat.

In a contested election in 1867, residents voted to move the county seat to Charlevoix, which was upheld by a Circuit Court decision in 1868.

No provisions for official relocation were authorized, although Harbor Springs served as the unofficial county seat until April 1902.

(The former was a mangled spelling derived from the French L'Arbre Croche, the historic village later renamed as Harbor Springs.)

The county supervisors' Arbour Croche was defined as having the same boundaries as the state-defined Little Traverse Township, excluding the area overlapping with Bear Creek.

In Michigan, most local government functions – police and fire, building and zoning, tax assessment, street maintenance etc.

(information as of December 2020) The economy of Emmet County, along with that of the rest of Northern Michigan, is heavily boosted by local companies and manufacturing.

The Kilwins chocolate-manufacturing company is based in Petoskey, although over 100 locations of the store exist in 21 states, mostly in popular tourist destinations.

The company, founded in 1947 under a similar name by Don and Katey Kilwin, specializes in making ice cream, candy, chocolate, and fudge.

Emmet County is served by Pellston Regional Airport, with connections to Detroit and other locales in Northern Michigan.