Golf in Belding

Belding is a small Ionia County city in the Flat River valley, a community whose industrial history was built around the Belding Bros. & Co. silk ribbon manufacturing company that made it, remarkably, the world's largest manufacturer of silk thread and ribbons in the late nineteenth century—a distinction that the small mid-Michigan city held based on the quality of its silk works and the commercial networks of a company that exported globally from this unlikely inland Michigan location. The silk heritage has faded, but Belding maintains its character as a small Flat River valley community serving the agricultural and residential population of central Ionia County. Golf in Belding reflects the community's mid-Michigan small-city character and the recreational expectations of a county whose economy spans agriculture, light manufacturing, and the state prison industry that Ionia County has hosted for over a century.