made it to 100

#US-31 EDR

Its intended as a US-31 EMERGENCY DETOUR ROUTE, which is why "31" is the last two digits, similar to many other triple-digit routes.

#County Route B31

In the town of Nunica itself, there's a County route designated as "B31". Since B is the second letter of the alphabet, one might assume "231" from that, although in a Hexadecimal context, it'd be more like 2,865. Normally routes don't have quadruple digits, so it was sorta a good idea to have alphanumeric county routes.

B-31 goes all the way to M-120, both of which ride along the border of Newaygo County and Muskegon County. Interestingly, M-120 used to be M-213 in the past, see "M-213" section below.

#an area code in Michigan

231 is also a telephone area code. Incidentally, 231 is not the area code for Nunica, although the 231 area code was formerly part of the 616 area code which Ottawa County, and Grand Rapids, and some other cities are part of. The 231 area code was created in 1999, which would be 16 years before M-231 opened to traffic.

After all, lots of people driving on US-31 are heading to the 231 area code, and might take M-231 in the event of a drawbridge situation, whether it be traffic jams caused by the bridge being up, or even the bridge being OUT OF ORDER needing maintenance.

Although, the 231 area code starts in Muskegon, where I-96 terminates at US-31, so essentially, the US-31 EDR starts at I-96 going toward Nunica (M-231), and then picks up at M-231, and then M-45 going back to US-31.

#M-213 anecdote

Back in the 1950s, and prior, there used to be a route called M-213, which occupied the Maple Island Road corridor going from M-46 to M-20 (present-day M-120), and in the present day, that roadway is a segment of county route B31, explanation about that route above.

It has been explained on Christopher Bessert's Michigan Highways website that M-231 has an odd, tenuous connection of M-213, as explained in this article:

https://michiganhighways.org/listings/M-231.html

That article really inspired me to make my own post, here on Reddit, about M-231's oddities.

#US-231 maybe?

There's also a route called US-231 which doesn't even enter Michigan at all, in fact, it veers northwest toward US-41 near the Chicagoland area near the Indiana/Illinois border.

But to be fair, having no US-231 in Michigan meant that the M-231 designation was available for use back when the project was first announced in the late 2000s.

US-231 goes through the state of Alabama, and it's neighboring state, Mississippi, has a city called Tunica in it, and Tunica rhymes with Nunica.

#Ramona 231

The phrase "Ramona 231" was said in the movie American Graffiti. What's interesting about American Graffiti, is that an actror named Richard Dreyfuss was in the movie, and his 68th birthday was one day before the day when Michigan's M-231 route opened to traffic, but it's unlikely that that had any influence on the timing of events.

However, Richard Dreyfuss' character Curt was not the one who uttered the phrase "Ramona 231", it was John Milner played by Paul Le Mat.

#BASE-4 number of some other route

M-231 terminates at M-45. I've also discovered that if you enter 45 in BASE-10, and change the radix to 4, you get number 231, so 231 is also the BASE-4 equivalent of the BASE-10 number 45.

#kilograms-to-pounds unit conversion

I am aware that M-231 intersects with a route called M-104 which has been along a lot longer. I also recently discovered that there are about maybe 104 kilograms in 231 pounds, although it's more like 104.779 kilograms when 231 is an INTEGER for pounds.

so that's another probable inspiration for the route number.

#any other ideas?

Any other "231" connections to point out?

just thought I'd a share a faux-French variant of the name Nunica to keep the posts coming.

and besides, if a word ends in -ique in place of -ica or -ic, you'll know it's the French variant of it, whether its a real name or not.

The reason why I mention him in a Nunica (Ottawa County) subreddit is because of my fond memories of seeing his name mentioned in an article about the M-231 project years before it opened to traffic, coincidentally on Pete Hoekstra's 62nd birthday during 2019.

and the letters of the name Nunica add up to number 62.

One thing I can say about this, is that M-231 in Michigan, and US-231 in Indiana and many other states are actually a reference to US-31. One actually terminates at US-31, while the other is simply just a reference to the fact that it's an "emergency detour route" for US-31.

drivers gotta get around, so you might as well state some factoids about these highways prior to cruising in the areas they are in. And sometimes it might be as fun as movies referencing it.

45 is ASCII code for -, - is Morse code for T, and 231 is ASCII code for a character shaped similar to T, and M-231 forms a T-junction with M-45.

we've gone full circle.

45 is -

196 is ─

If you notice how M-45 terminates at I-196, that's may serve as a good mneomoic to memorizing codes.

notice how one is similar to, but longer than the other.

People take the highway layout of the Nunica (Ottawa County) area for granted.

Also consider this:

196 is concurrent with US-31 for some distance.

M-45 is part of the US-31 EMERGENCY DETOUR ROUTE.

Before M-231 was built, there was an older freeway bypassing the Nunica area, and that one is I-96.

Does anybody here know that 60 is the HEXADECIMAL number for 96? I learned this from discovering the INP(&H60) function on QBasic, and thought it was rather interesting to find out that 60 is HEX (BASE-16) for 96's DECIMAL DIGIT (BASE-10) increment.

Just thought I'd point out some factoids as I anticipate more growth of this sub about Ottawa County, and yeah, Nunica is just being used as a metonym for the county, since I believe in metonymy as the reason for the sub's name.

60 is hexadecimal for 96, and I-96 goes through Ottawa County!