Michigan

Detroit's Mexicantown offers readers a glimpse into this rich and cultural community's beginnings.

Mexican immigrants began to settle in Detroit at the beginning of the 20th century. They were attracted by the jobs available in the automobile industry and the rest of the rapidly expanding industrial base. Like other immigrant ethnic groups, Mexicans came to Detroit intent on providing a better life, and future, for their families. They opened businesses like specialty grocery and retail stores, barbershops, and restaurants. They bought homes, educated their children, served in all branches of the military, and became model Americans. What they brought to Detroit were family values, faith, and a strong work ethic. Detroit's Mexicantown offers a glimpse into when and where the community started.

Through nearly 200 vintage photographs, this book documents the history of Harbor Country and its many roles throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The eight villages of Southwest Michigan's Harbor Country-Michiana, Grand Beach, New Buffalo, Union Pier, Lakeside, Harbert, Sawyer, and Three Oaks-have evolved from a group of humble frontier communities into a vacation mecca. Just 90 minutes from Chicago, Harbor Country's unspoiled beaches, marinas, antique shops, and shady country lanes have offered a weekend refuge to weary urbanites for years. The New York Times once called Harbor Country ""the Hamptons of the Midwest,"" perhaps because the area draws Chicago's illuminati to its shores. Yet most of the region's first settlers were lumbermen, farmers, fishermen, and railroad workers, and Harbor Country's rustic, small-town ambience remains as their legacy.Once an aspiring Great Lakes port, then briefly a railroad center, as well as a lumbering community that supplied the timber to build Chicago, Harbor Country is revealed as an area with rich history and everlasting appeal.

Explore the lasting influence of the Finnish people in the Upper Peninsula.

At the time, Hancock consisted of nothing more than a small cluster of humble buildings, but it was here, on the outskirts of mid-19th-century civilization, that Finnish settlement in Michigan's Upper Peninsula (UP) took root. Much to the surprise of these new Americans, Midsummer was not a religious holiday marked by feasts in celebration of the season's prolonged sunlight. Rather, the newcomers were immediately hastened into the bowels of the earth to extract copper in pursuit of the American Dream. In short order, hardworking Finnish immigrants became reputable miners, lumberjacks, farmers, maids, and commercial fishermen. A century and a half later, the UP boasts the largest Finnish population outside of the motherland and sustains the determined spirit the Finns call sisu - an influence that remains palpable in all 15 UP counties.

From the author of Remembering Flint and Hidden History of Flint come unearthed tales of Vehicle City's lost heritage.

The city of Flint waxed and waned with the automotive industry of the twentieth century. Where they have not vanished completely, crumbling signs of past opulence stand as painful reminders of more recent struggles. Hardly a trace remains of the Buick City factory complex that sprawled across the city's north side. The placid waters of Flint Park Lake once echoed with the sounds of an amusement park--games, dancing, circus acts, even a roller coaster. Flint Community Schools pioneered a model for how schools can function outside regular hours, but too many now are closed and deteriorating. Local author Gary Flinn uncovers the abandoned places and lost traditions from the Vehicle City's past.

With rare photos and glimpses of its eccentric founder, discover the curious, fascinating history of the religious society that drew thousands of international visitors to the shores of Benton Harbor.

In 1903, Benjamin Purnell, a long-haired, bearded itinerant preacher, arrived in Benton Harbor. He and his wife, Mary, stepped out of their covered preacher's wagon, and gazing across a thriving summer resort, they saw their long-awaited paradise. Acquiring this paradise, they established a religious colony called the House of David, which grew to over 1,000 members from around the world, with phenomenal talents in music, sports, entertainment, and architecture. A pre-Disneyland-type amusement park was constructed, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors annually. As the colony's leader, the very charismatic and convincing Purnell called himself a brother to Jesus, and members flocked in, handing over their homes, wealth, and worldly possessions for the promise of everlasting life, creating huge wealth. Soon they built exquisite mansions, hotels, restaurants, cruise ships, factories, and miniature railroads. Holdings included diamond and gold mines, an island in Lake Michigan, thousands of acres of farmland, an Australian resort, an art studio, orchestras, vaudeville acts, a famous bearded baseball team, and more. This book will take readers on the fascinating journey of the House of David.

The history of Jackson County, Michigan, brims with colorful characters and noteworthy episodes nearly lost to time.

Jackson abolitionists used their barns, houses and hidden compartments to harbor freedom seekers traveling on the Underground Railroad. One even repelled an armed posse from Kentucky. A prominent druggist murdered his mother in 1889 and a jail guard in 1893.Evidence suggests he murdered his father too. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt traveled to Brown's Lake for relaxation in 1935, but a media mob had other plans. A popular Blackman Township roadhouse has a longstanding tradition of entertaining pioneers, stagecoach drivers and mobsters, but its secret guests are even stranger.

Join local historian Linda Hass as she delves into these and other entertaining and often-overlooked stories.

Plymouth, Michigan's First Century: Innovators and Industry contains more than 200 images from the Plymouth Historical Museum and from the collections of some of Plymouth's current residents. You'll see the township blossom from farms and mills to a cohesive community of inventors and patriots. Early images of the main business block of Plymouth Village are reminiscent of the Wild West; later images depict a vibrant community, as it remains today.

In their previous book, Midland: The Way We Were, Virginia Florey and Leona Seamster documented the significant people and places that have shaped Midland's rich history. In their second installment, Midland: Her Continuing Story, they have included the history of neighboring towns-Averill, Sanford, Coleman, Hope, and Edenville-that played a significant role in the lumbering era. Through nearly 200 historical photographs and a collection of unprecedented personal stories, Florey and Seamster again explore this fascinating region and focus on its proud heritage as an industrial leader.

Jewish Detroit chronicles in photographs the history of this remarkable community in Detroit, from its growth within the city to its migration to the suburbs, from its battles against anti-Semitism at the hands of Henry Ford and others to celebrating its own heroes like Hank Greenberg, the all-star first baseman of the Detroit Tigers.

Grand River Avenue details the history of this historical Michigan roadway, which has served as a footpath, wagon rut, and ultimately a two-lane highway.

Grand River Avenue, or Michigan US-16 as it was ultimately designated, is one of Michigan's true ""Blue Highways""--an original two-lane, blacktop road still serving as a direct path through roadside America. Originally a Native American trail, this ancient path has been a westbound route from the Straits of Detroit to the eastern shores of Lake Michigan for more than 1,000 years. Over time, it has served as a footpath, horse trail, wagon rut, stagecoach route, plank road, and ultimately a two-lane highway that gave some of America's earliest motorists their first taste of long-distance automobile travel.

She was built as the flagship for the Pere Marquette Railway's Lake Michigan ferry fleet, and signified a bold departure from traditional Great Lakes vessel design. Her sleek outboard profile, spacious passenger accommodations, and modern interior furnishings were a hit with the traveling public. By the time she was retired from service in 1988, she had served both the Pere Marquette and Chesapeake & Ohio Railroads, transported thousands of travelers as a passenger ferry, and become known as the "Queen of the Great Lakes Car Ferries."