Lansing - Michigan - History

JANUARY 26, 1987. Michigan celebrates its 150th anniversary of statehood. The day's festivities begin in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan's oldest continuous settlement, with a 26-gun salute and a bitter-cold dogsled ride. In Lansing the official Michigan Statehood Stamp is issued. At noon, ceremonies are held in the State Capitol and in every county in the state. Despite economic setbacks during the late 1970s and early 1980s, Michigan has rebounded. Michigan--with over nine million people--ranks twelfth in population among the fifty states.

A brief history

MAY 17, 1673. Jesuit missionary Jacques Marquette, fur trader Louis Jolliet and five voyageurs leave the recently established Indian mission at St. Ignace to explore a great river known by the Indians as the "Messissipi." The French have been exploring the Great Lakes since Etienne Brulι reached the St. Marys River around 1620.

JULY 24, 1701. Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, a 43-year-old French army officer, selects a site at le dιtroit (the straits)--the waterway between Lakes St. Clair and Erie--and establishes a French settlement.

JULY 11, 1796. U.S. regulars under the command of Lt. Colonel John F. Hamtramck enter Detroit and replace the British Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes. The ceremony comes thirteen years after the signing of the Treaty of Paris at the end of the American Revolution.

JANUARY 22, 1813. A British force of 1,300 soldiers and Indians falls upon an American army at the River Raisin near present-day Monroe. Against direct orders, U.S. Brigadier General James Winchester has moved his force of 700 Kentuckians and 200 regulars to the River Raisin.

JANUARY 26, 1837. In Washington, DC, President Andrew Jackson signs the bill making Michigan the nation's twenty-sixth state.

JANUARY 27, 1847. Francis Troutman and several others arrive at the home of the Adam Crosswhite family--Kentucky slaves who have escaped to Marshall.

JUNE 22, 1855. The passage of the steamer Illinois through the locks at Sault Ste. Marie marks the opening of unobstructed shipping between Lakes Superior and Huron. Ships are no longer forced to stop at Sault Ste. Marie and portage their cargoes around the rapids of the St. Mary's River, which drops twelve feet from Lake Superior to Lake Huron.

JULY 1, 1863. The Twenty-fourth Michigan Infantry, a member of the famed Iron Brigade, engages advancing Confederate forces at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. In savage fighting, the Twenty-fourth suffers 80 percent casualties--the greatest loss of any northern regiment in the war's most dynamic battle.

NOVEMBER 1, 1957. The Mackinac Bridge connecting Michigan's two peninsulas, opens. After numerous proposals to bridge the Straits of Mackinac--the earliest in 1884--Governor G. Mennen Williams appointed the Mackinac Bridge Authority in 1950. Former U.S. Senator Prentiss M. Brown of St. Ignace served as chairman.