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Destination Medical Mile To Discover Early History of Grand Rapids
Destination Medical Mile To Discover Early History of Grand Rapids
| Early History of Grand Rapids |
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| West Michigan | |||||||||||||||
| Thursday, 16 July 2009 13:19 | |||||||||||||||
 Grand Rapids is the second largest city in Michigan and the 114th largest city in the United States (as of the 2000 census) The city population is 197,800. It is also the county seat of Kent County, Michigan. As history is reported, over 2,000 years ago, the Hopewell indians occupied the Grand Rapids area called the River Valley. Then, around A.D. 1700, the Ottawa Indians displaced the Hopewells and settled several villages on the banks of the Grand River. European missionaries and fur traders began settling the Grand Rapids area at the beginning of the 1800's The La Framboise family established one of the first Indian and European trading post on the western side of Michigan. The first permanent white settler in the Grand Rapids area was a Baptist minister named Isaac McCoy who arrived in 1825. The official founder of Grand Rapids, Louis Campau, opened built his cabin, trading post, and blacksmith shop on the east bank of the Grand River near the rapids - circa 1826. Campau returned to Detroit, then came back a year later with his wife and $5,000 of trade goods to trade with the native tribes. In 1831 the federal survey of the Northwest Territory reached the Grand River and set the boundaries for Kent County, named after prominent New York jurist James Kent. Campau became perhaps the most important settler when, in 1831, he bought 72 acres (291,000 m²) of what is now the entire downtown business district of Grand Rapids. He purchased it from the federal government for $90 and named his tract Grand Rapids. Rival Lucius Lyon, who purchased the rest of the prime land, called his the Village of Kent. At this time, other european immigrants and others began moving to the area from New York and New England in the 1830s.  In 1836 John Ball, representing a group of New York land speculators, bypassed Detroit for a better deal in Grand Rapids. Ball declared the Grand River valley "the promised land, or at least the most promising one for my operations."By 1838, the fledgling Grand Rapids had incorporated itself as a village, and encompassed an area of approximately three-quarters of a mile (1 km) . The first formal census occurred in 1845, which announced a population of 1,510 and recorded an area of four square miles. At this the Federal Government left local matters to local residents and on May 1st 1850 the local residents voted and accepted a city charter to call their village - The City of Grand Rapids. At the population at the time was 2,686. By 1857, the city of Grand Rapids' boundary totaled 10.5 square miles (27 km²). .
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