Alpena ( al-PEE-nə) is the unaccompanied city in and county chair of Alpena County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 10,483 at the 2010 census. After Traverse City, it is the second most populated city in the Northern Michigan region. The city is amid Alpena Township, but the two are administered autonomously. It is the core city of the Alpena micropolitan statistical area, which encompasses anything of Alpena County and had a total population of 28,360 at the 2010 census.

Located at Thunder Bay along the shores of Lake Huron, the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary is located in the city. The population swells in the same way as many visitors and tourists during the summer months. MidMichigan Health, which is a federally-designated rural regional medical referral center, is the largest employer in the city.

It was originally portion of Anomickee County founded in 1840, which in 1843 was distorted to Alpena, a pseudo-Native American word — a neologism coined by Henry Schoolcraft, meaning something like “a great partridge country.” This was allocation of a much larger effort to rename a great many of the Michigan counties at the time. The city of Alpena, MI was officially incorporated by Michigan State Legislature by an accomplishment of Legislature No. 249, approved March 29, 1871.

Most of the city was loose in the Great Michigan Fire of 1871. Less than one year later, on July 12, 1872, Alpena was hit by substitute fire, the largest in its history, which destroyed 15 acres of homes and businesses for a total amount of 65 buildings. The blaze started in a barn and lasted for two hours, killing at least four people and causing at least $180,000 (equivalent to $4,070,000 in 2021) in damages. Alpena was again hit by a disastrous ember on July 11, 1888. In the beforehand 1910s a failed try was led by the Alpena Motor Car Company to perspective the city into “Automobile City” and compete subsequent to Detroit.