Michigan

Name: Plainfield Township
Brand: Ann E. Byle
SKU: 9780738552316
Price: 24.99 USD
Availability: InStock

Things get made in Michigan. Consult a schematic of Detroit history to connect the Ford dynasty and the myriad auto companies that followed to the Willow Run assembly line churning out B-24 bombers during WWII. But this ingenuity also lives in the crispness of Vernor’s Ginger Ale and the handcrafted perfection of Pewabic Pottery. From the postwar idyll of Detroit’s Grand River and Greenfield neighborhood to the ghostly trickster at the capitol in Lansing, flip the switch on Michigan history with our Michigan history books. [View all Michigan books]

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Lucky to Live in Michigan

Wise Animal Handbook Michigan, The

$16.99

Rochester and Rochester Hills

$24.99

Grand Rapids in Stereographs

The Works Progress Administration in Detroit

$24.99

Legendary Locals of Detroit

$24.99

Presque Isle County

$24.99

Detroit's Holy Family Church

$24.99

Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries

$24.99

Detroit's Holy Cross Cemetery

$24.99

Dowagiac

$24.99

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Plainfield Township

9780738552316

$24.99

Lovely plains and beautiful fields greeted settlers eager to put down roots in the area north of the growing city of Grand Rapids. The northernmost point of the Grand River and its environs, including the Rogue River joining the Grand nearby, offered folks everything they needed: river and road travel, good farmland, plenty of forestland, and enough space to grow and prosper. Soon the area was known as Plainfield Township, with the bustling Plainfield Village at its center. Small communities grew up around the township, including Belmont and Comstock Park that exist today but also Konkle Town and Childsdale, which do not. Plainfield Village is gone as well, but the spirit of those early pioneers lives on. Today Plainfield Township is a combination of city and country, businesses and farms, and longtime residents and those just discovering the beauty of this area that still boasts plains and fields.

Sault Ste. Marie

9780738552323

$24.99

Sault Ste. Marie was destined to be a gathering place. Native Americans relied on the rapids of the St. Mary's River, which links two Great Lakes, Superior and Huron, for a year-round supply of fish. Its population swelled in the summer--a tradition that continued as French traders came to turn in their pelts and celebrate the end of another long, hard winter. After the Revolutionary War, the Sault, as it is called, became a community divided on national lines, with the United States holding one shore and Canada the other. Eventually man conquered the rapids, and today the Soo Locks transport millions of tons of freight annually to ports all over the world. Tourists are drawn by the cool breezes off the lake and the sight of steel behemoths passing almost close enough to touch.

Rochester and Rochester Hills

9780738583488

$24.99

Rochester and Rochester Hills grew in a territory of three rivers, abundantly fertile pastures, and rolling oak forests on land once considered uninhabitable. Though only 30 miles from Detroit, official government reports of swampy and barren land deterred settlers. In 1817, the Graham family disregarded these reports, instead following the advice of Native Americans to reach a territory governed by a triumvirate of creeks, which were forceful enough to power several mills yet gentle enough to support thriving farms. Only 20 years later, every plot in Rochester had been sold. Later the village was made a stop on the network of Michigan railroads, cementing its fate as a vigorous and popular community. With a past boasting such illustrious citizens as auto baron John Dodge and internationally prominent obstetrician Dr. Bertha Van Hoosen, with corporations like Parke-Davis and philanthropic organizations such as Leader Dogs for the Blind, Rochester remains a source of innovative leadership as well as a model for successful suburbia.

Grand Rapids in Stereographs

9780738551227

$24.99

Beginning around 1865, as the fledgling art and science of photography began to appear in cities and towns across the United States, a small group of photographers, using new methods and equipment developed a few years before in Europe, began producing and offering for sale stereographic views of the people, places, and events that made up daily life in the then nearly 40-year-old city of Grand Rapids. These photographic views were unlike others
that had preceded them and when viewed using a special device, they presented a detailed, three-dimensional portrait of the young city. Once introduced, stereographic views of the city, alongside those of more distant lands, became wildly popular and soon graced the homes of many in this city and elsewhere. The stereographic cards themselves today offer a rare and detailed glimpse of
the city, its residents, and some of the special and unusual events that occurred nearly 150 years ago.

Mackinaw City

9780738551340

$24.99

Rich in history, magnificent in scenery, and abundant in hospitality, Mackinaw City lies at the very tip of Michigan's Lower Peninsula and is the area's own majestic playground. From early Native American settlements, French explorers, and fur traders to Mackinaw City founding father Edgar Conkling's vision to build a business center upon the south shore of the Mackinac Straits, Mackinaw City does not disappoint anyone who visits it. Due to its strategic location on the crossroads of the Great Lakes, this area has always been a gathering place for early inhabitants. When the railroad arrived in the late 1800s, it provided needed transportation with unique railroad and car ferries to and from Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Today Mackinaw City still enjoys the distinction of being one of the most popular historical resort areas in Michigan. Through the insight of talented individuals who had the foresight to capture history with the interesting and colorful medium of the postcard, one is able to learn and smile at Mackinaw days gone by.

Detroit's New Center

9780738532714

$24.99

The northern anchor of Detroit's greater downtown, New Center is a diverse and vibrant neighborhood that offers shopping, entertainment, and dining among landmark architecture, historic districts, and contemporary homes and businesses.

Shortly after General Motors built their headquarters three miles north of downtown, the Fisher Brothers conceived the idea of a ""new center"" and proceeded to construct the landmark Fisher and New Center Buildings. From this initial activity in the 1920s sprung a new commercial district, a new neighborhood, and a New Center for the City of Detroit. Detroit's New Center takes readers on a journey from New Center's origins as a planned business district to its current life as a thriving area where Detroiters live, work, and play.

The Works Progress Administration in Detroit

9780738551814

$24.99

In the midst of the Depression, a government agency was created that changed the lives of thousands of Americans. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) was more than a program that put the unemployed to work, it was a revolutionary concept that sought to improve the lives of Americans through the physical improvement of their surroundings and the physical and intellectual improvement of themselves. For the people of Detroit, the WPA built schools and libraries, provided clothing and shelter, and enriched their lives through literacy, health, and educational programs. It brought art, theater, and music to the masses through groundbreaking cultural programs and created the infrastructure necessary to allow Detroit to blossom into the "Arsenal of Democracy" and one of America's greatest cities.

Legendary Locals of Detroit

9781467100427

$24.99

Detroit sports a very uneven background. The city dates from 1701, when Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac planted the flag of New France, some 75 years before America became a nation. Almost two-thirds of Detroit's history was spent as little more than a frontier military outpost--home to French farmers and fur traders who shared the quarters with the soldiers. But as the 20th century arrived, the impact of the automobile roused the city from its slumber. Within a century's time, the industry set in motion by Henry Ford produced a skyrocketing population, a diverse mosaic of ethnic groups, and levels of culture and affluence rivaled by few other places. The literature of Joyce Carol Oates, the architecture of Albert Kahn, and the music fostered by Berry Gordy enriched life and created the "Paris of the Midwest." But growing pains were inevitable: growing racial instability culminated in the insurrection of 1967, inflicting deep wounds yet creating new opportunities for harmony and justice that were capitalized on by Rev. William Cunningham. Today, efforts continue to remove the tarnish from this corner of the "Rust Belt."

Presque Isle County

9780738599779

$24.99

Norman Rockwell would have found no shortage of subjects for his paintings in any of the small communities in Presque Isle County. It is an idyllic region in Michigan's northeastern Lower Peninsula with more than 50 miles of Lake Huron shoreline, dozens of inland lakes and streams, and sprawling forests of pines and hardwoods. It was probably those attributes that attracted Native Americans to the region about 8,000 years ago. Shortly after the Civil War, the Indians were joined by throngs of European immigrants who found jobs in lumber camps and sawmills or homesteaded farms. The region's lumber boom was followed by a limestone boom in the early 20th century, and it created hundreds of jobs in the quarries and on ships that carried the stone to markets around the Great Lakes. The boom years are just a memory now, but the natural attributes of the county attract tourists and modern settlers seeking a more serene experience than can be found in the tourist meccas on Michigan's west coast.

Detroit's Holy Family Church

9780738552170

$24.99

The traditions of the Sicilians and Italians have been present in Detroit and Holy Family Church since the early 1900s. The church being the very root of their soul, they have maintained their ancestors' culture and the rituals they brought with them over 100 years ago. Some of these customs date back hundreds of years in their homelands of Cinisi, Terrasini, Trapani, and many other cities. Bonnie Leone was born, raised, and still resides in Detroit. Originally appointed by Gov. John Engler to the position of Wayne County jury commissioner, Leone is a member of several genealogical societies, tracing some of her ancestors as far back as the 1500s. Her strong sense of history, art, and tradition brought her to this church, so that she may help to preserve and protect the traditions of the last 100 years of the Sicilians in Detroit.

Metro Detroit's High School Football Rivalries

9780738561684

$24.99

High school football has been an institution in metro Detroit since the day the assembly line changed America. From the game's inception at the prep level in the early 1900s to the annual Thanksgiving Day games that would make or break a school's season, prep football has been a rite of passage for players, parents, coaches, and fans alike in Detroit since after World War II. Detroit's high schools were massed and assembled from the immigrant pockets that carved out city and suburban landscapes. The one constant in all these cultural melting pots was high school football. For parents and neighbors of the marching bands, cheerleaders, and players, football season in the golden age of high school sports was an all-community event. Towns shuttered and time stopped for nine Fridays in the fall.

Detroit's Holy Cross Cemetery

9780738577036

$24.99

In the early hours before dawn on October 6, 1907, a raging fire illuminated the sky as the historic chapel that stood on the cemetery grounds for over half a century reduced to a pile of cinders and ash. Lit by sparks from a nearby barn ablaze from an act of arson, the fire destroyed priceless paintings, relics, statues, and artifacts that held sacrament to the area's earliest settlers. So ended the era of the cemetery's obscure past and launched a new era for the little mission?turned?graveyard nestled southwest of Detroit. Detroit's Holy Cross Cemetery is a collage of persons whose immigrant dreams landed them in an area budding with industry. The cemetery's evolution reflects the waves of immigration, from the early French to the Irish, Germans, Hungarians, Poles, and Hispanics. From its 1838 2-acre roots to its current 65-acre span, Holy Cross Cemetery filled the need for a Catholic cemetery on Detroit's west side.

Dowagiac

9780738534220

$24.99

The story of Dowagiac's first 100 years may ring familiar to other small cities across the United States. After Dowagiac was established on a railroad line in 1848, new settlers arrived and had the opportunity to establish large-scale factories in the young village. This growth would last for a
full century, fueled by the Round Oak Stove Company and other manufacturers in the city. Because of its manufacturing base, immigrants moved to Dowagiac, and the small city enjoyed strong business and manufacturing districts, solid educational institutions, and a vibrant social life. Surrounding lakes provided one venue for entertainment, while downtown Dowagiac offered theaters and fairs. This book documents and celebrates the history of Dowagiac with over 200 photographs from the collection of the Museum at Southwestern Michigan College.