Traverse City ( TRAV-ərz) is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is the county chair of Grand Traverse County, although a small portion extends into Leelanau County. It is the largest city in the 21-county Northern Michigan region. The population was 15,678 at the 2020 census, with 153,448 in the four-county Traverse City micropolitan area. Traverse City is along with the second-largest city in Michigan north of the Tri-Cities, behind Marquette.

Traverse City is located at the head of the East and West arms of Grand Traverse Bay, a 32-mile-long (51 km) bay of Lake Michigan. Grand Traverse Bay is estranged into arms by the 17-mile-long (27 km) Old Mission Peninsula, which is attached at its base to Traverse City. The city borders four townships–East Bay, Elmwood, Garfield, and Peninsula–all of which contain substantial suburban sprawl.

Traverse City is Famous for brute a cherry production hotspot, as the Place was the largest producer of sour cherries in the United States in 2010. The city hosts the National Cherry Festival, attracting nearly 500,000 visitors annually. The Place is next known for its viticulture industry, and is one of the centers of wine production in the Midwest. Traverse City is located simple the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, as without difficulty as a number of freshwater beaches, downhill skiing areas, and numerous forests. For these reasons, Traverse City is a year-round tourism hotspot, winning multipart accolades and awards. Traverse City has with been noted as one of Michigan’s top LGBT-friendly locations.

The Traverse City area is home to the Ojibwe, Ottawa, and Potawatomi people. They lived through the European colonization and the commencement of the Northwest Territory. These people groups inhabited the Place surrounding the Great Lakes, including Michigan. The Traverse City area was known to Natives as gichi-wiikwedoongsing (Ojibwe: ‘at the head of the good bay’), which was often anglicized to Wequetong. This settlement was located near the current-day mouth of the Boardman River, then known as adaawewiziibi (Ojibwe: ‘river of trade’), however Wequetong was abandoned on the advent of European harmony to the region.