Michigan

State of Michigan

Flag of Michigan Seal of Michigan
State nickname: The Wolverine State, The Great Lakes State
Official languages	English de-facto
Capital	Lansing
Largest city	Detroit
Governor	Jennifer Granholm (D)
Senators	Carl Levin (D) Debbie Stabenow (D)
Area  - Total  - % water	Ranked 11th 96,889 mi² / 250,941 km² 41.3
Population  - Total (2000)  - Density	Ranked 8th 9,938,444 179 per mi² / 67.55/km² (15th)
Admission into Union	January 26, 1837 (26th)
Time Zone	Eastern: UTC-5/-4 (Some Upper Peninsula counties bordering Wisconsin are Central time.)
Coordinates  - Latitude  - Longitude  - Width  - Length	41°41'N to 47°30'N 82°26'W to 90°31'W 239 miles / 385 km 491 miles / 790 km
Elevation  - Highest point  - Mean  - Lowest point	1,978 ft. / 603 m 902 ft. / 275 m 571 ft / 174 m
Abbreviations  - USPS  - ISO 3166-2	MI US-MI
Web site	www.michigan.gov

Michigan is a state in the United States. The name is derived from Lake Michigan, which in turn is believed to come from the Chippewa Indian word meicigama, meaning "great water." Bounded by four of the Great Lakes, Michigan has the longest freshwater shoreline in the continental United States, the longest total shoreline after Alaska (including island shorelines [1]), and more recreational boats than any other state in the union. A person in Michigan is never more than 85 miles (137 km) from a Great Lake.

History

Michigan was home to various Native American tribes for centuries before the arrival of Europeans. When the first European explorers arrived, the most populous and influential tribes were the linguistically and ethnically related Ottawa, Chippewa, and Potawatomi. Within Michigan, the Chippewa were the most populous, estimated at between 25,000 and 35,000, and were predominant in the western Upper Peninsula and northern Wisconsin, though they were also present in other areas of the Upper Peninsula and Northern Michigan. The Ottawa primarily inhabited the area around the Straits of Mackinac and areas of Northern Michigan, while the Potawatomi resided primarily in southwest Michigan. The three tribes co-existed peacefully and formed a loose confederation known as the Council of Three Fires. Other tribes with a presence in Michigan were the Mascouten, Miami, and Wyandot (or Huron).

Michigan was explored and settled by French voyageurs in the 17th century. The first Europeans to reach what later became Michigan were Étienne Brûlé's group in 1622. The first European settlement was made in 1668 by Father Jacques Marquette, a Jesuit missionary who established a mission at Sault Ste. Marie. In 1679, Robert Cavelier Sieur de la Salle directed the construction of the Griffin--the first European sailing vessel on the upper Great Lakes. That same year, La Salle built Fort Miami at present-day St. Joseph.

In 1701, French explorer and army officer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac founded Detroit on the straits between Lakes St. Clair and Erie. Cadillac had convinced King Louis XIV's chief minister, Louis Phélypeaux, comte de Pontchartrain, that a permanent community at present-day Detroit would strengthen French control over the upper Great Lakes and repel British advances. The one hundred soldiers and workers that accompanied Cadillac built a 200-square-foot palisade and named it Fort Pontchartrain. Cadillac's wife, Marie Thérèse, soon moved to Detroit, becoming one of the first white women to settle in the Michigan wilderness. The town quickly became a major fur-trading and shipping post. At the same time, the French strengthened Fort Michilimackinac at the Straits of Mackinac in order to better control their lucrative fur-trading empire. By the mid-eighteenth century, the French had also occupied forts at present-day Niles and Sault Ste. Marie. Most of the rest of the region remained unsettled by whites, however.

By 1760, the French would lose their North American empire with their defeat by the British in the French and Indian War (1754–1763). Michigan passed to Great Britain in 1763 and then to the new United States two decades later. The population grew slowly until the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, which brought large numbers of settlers.

By the 1830s, Michigan had some 80,000 residents, more than enough to apply for statehood. A state government was formed in 1835, although Congressional recognition of the state languished due to a boundary dispute with Ohio, with both sides claiming a 468 square mile (1,210 km²) strip of land that included the important port city of Toledo on Lake Erie and an area to the west then known as the "Great Black Swamp." The dispute eventually culminated into what would be known as the Toledo War when Michigan and Ohio militia maneuvered in the area. Ultimately, Congress awarded the "Toledo Strip" to Ohio, and Michigan, having received the western part of the Upper Peninsula as a concession, formally entered the Union on January 26, 1837.

Thought to be useless at the time of its addition to Michigan, it was soon discovered that the Upper Peninsula was a rich and important source of lumber, iron, and copper, which would become the state's most sought-after natural resources. Geologist Douglass Houghton and land surveyor William Austin Burt were among the first to document and discover many of these resources, which led to a nation-wide increase of interest in the state.

Michigan's economy underwent a massive shift at the turn of the 20th century. The birth of the automotive industry, with Henry Ford's first plant in the Highland Park suburb of Detroit, marked the beginning of a new era in personal transportation. It was a development that not only transformed Detroit and Michigan, but permanently altered the socio-economic climate of the United States and much of the world, for that matter.

Grand Rapids, the second-largest city in Michigan, is also a center of automotive manufacturing. Since 1838, the city has also been noted for its thriving furniture industry.

Since World War II, Detroit's industrial base has eroded as auto companies abandoned some of the area's industrial parks in favor of less expensive labor found overseas and in southern U.S. states. Still, with 10 million residents, Michigan remains a large and influential state and ranks 8th in population among the 50 states.

Michigan history timeline

Early European history

• 1622 Étienne Brûlé and his fellow explorers from Grenoble, France, were probably the first white men to see Lake Superior.
• 1668 Père (Father) Jacques Marquette established Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, the first European settlement in Michigan
• 1701 Antoine de Lamothe Cadillac, with his lieutenant Alphonse de Tonty, established a trading post on the Detroit River which they name Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit; now the present site of Detroit.
• 1760 Detroit was captured by the British.
• 1760s Chief Pontiac led a major revolt of the Ottawa tribe against the British.
• 1783 The area that is now Michigan is included with the territory ceded by Great Britain to the United States by the Treaty of Paris that ended the American Revolutionary War. The U.S. did not take control of the territory until 1796.
• 1796 Detroit and other posts in Michigan were turned over to the United States under terms of the Jay Treaty. Wayne County was established as an administrative division of the Northwest Territory.

U.S. territorial history

• 1805 Michigan Territory was created, with Detroit designated as the seat of government. William Hull appointed as governor. Detroit was destroyed by fire.
• 1813 Lewis Cass became Territorial Governor.
• 1817 The University of Michigan is established in Detroit, the first public university in the state.
• 1819 In the Treaty of Saginaw, the Ojibwe, Ottawa, and Potawatomi ceded more than six million acres, or 24,000 km² in the central portion of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan to the United States.
• 1821 With the Treaty of Chicago, the Ojibwe, Ottawa, and Potawatomi ceded all the lands south of the Grand River to the United States.
• 1823 Congress transferred legislative powers previously exercised by the Territorial Governor and Judges to a nine-member Legislative Council, appointed by the U.S. President who selected them from eighteen persons chosen by the people. The Council was expanded to thirteen members in 1825 and made an elected body in 1827.
• 1828 Territorial Capitol built in Detroit at a cost of $24,500.
• 1835 First Constitutional Convention. Stevens T. Mason inaugurated as the first Governor. A minor conflict with Ohio, known as the Toledo War, over an area including the city of Toledo, Ohio, contributed to delaying Michigan's statehood. As a resolution, Ohio received Toledo and the Toledo Strip, while Michigan gained the western two-thirds of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
• 1837 Admitted as a free state into the union (the 26th state), it was admitted a few months after the slave state of Arkansas.

U.S. state history

• 1837 The Panic of 1837 was a severe setback to the nascent state bank and to several ambitious programs of public improvements, including the Clinton-Kalamazoo Canal
• 1838 Patriot War
• 1840 Douglass Houghton reported finding copper deposits on the Keweenaw Peninsula.
• 1846 Marji-Gesick, an Ojibwa Indian, pointed out a large deposit of iron ore to prospector Philo Everett near the present-day city of Negaunee.
• 1847 A law was passed by the State Legislature to re-locate from Detroit the State Capital to a site "in the township of Lansing, in the county of Ingham."
• 1855 Michigan State University is founded as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, becoming the first land grant university in the United States.
• 1879 New State Capitol dedicated in Lansing. The structure cost $1,510,130.
• 1890s and 1900s Ford, Chrysler and General Motors were founded in southeastern Michigan.
• 1937 Flint Sit-Down Strike ended with official recognition of the United Auto Workers by General Motors.
• 1943 Riot broke out pitting whites against blacks during wartime.
• 1957 Five-mile long Mackinac Bridge opened November 1.
• 1967 Race riots struck the city of Detroit. After 5 days of rioting, 43 people lay dead, 1189 injured and over 7000 people had been arrested. The riot had lasting effects on the entire metro region and is usually cited as one of the reasons the Detroit area is among the most segregated areas in the United States.
• 1974 Gerald R. Ford of Grand Rapids became the 38th President of the United States.
• 1987 Michigan celebrated 150 years of statehood.
• 2002 Michigan elects its first woman governor, Jennifer Granholm (D).

Law and Government

• Capital: Lansing
• Law/Government of state
  • governor — current, previous governors
    • Current: Jennifer Granholm
  • Michigan Legislature — bicameral
    • Michigan State House of Representatives
    • Michigan Senate
  • structure of state judiciary
  • Michigan Constitutions of 1835, 1850, 1908, and 1963
  • state constitution

• Referendum and Voter Initiative: Michigan's constitution provides for voter initiative and referendum (Article II, § 9 ^[2], defined as "the power to propose laws and to enact and reject laws, called the initiative, and the power to approve or reject laws enacted by the legislature, called the referendum. The power of initiative extends only to laws which the legislature may enact under this constitution."

Michigan counties and townships are statutory units of government, meaning that they have only those powers expressly provided or fairly implied by state law. Cities and villages are vested with home rule powers, meaning that they can do almost anything not prohibited by law.

There are two types of townships in Michigan: general law and charter. Charter township status was created by the state legislature in 1947 and grants additional powers and stream-lined administration in order to provide greater protection against annexation by a city. As of April 2001, there were 127 charter townships in Michigan.

Like other northern states, the Republican Party dominated Michigan until the Great Depression. In 1912, Michigan was one of the few states to support progressive third party candidate Teddy Roosevelt for president. In recent years, the state's strong industrial and union heritage has made the state lean Democratic, at least in national elections. Michigan has supported Democrats in the last four presidential elections. In 2004, John Kerry narrowly defeated George Bush, winning Michigan's 17 electoral votes by a margin of 3 percentage points with 51.2% of the vote. Republicans' greatest strength is in the western, northern, and rural parts of the state, especially in the Grand Rapids area. Democrats are strongest in the east, especially in metropolitan Detroit.

Geography

Michigan map depicting territorial waters

Michigan encompasses 96,810 mi² (250,630 km²), making it the largest state east of the Mississippi River if territorial water is included. Georgia and Florida each have a slightly larger land area, however. The state is subdivided into 83 counties.

Michigan borders Indiana and Ohio to the south, and Wisconsin to the southwest of the Upper Peninsula. The state also borders Minnesota, Illinois, the Canadian province of Ontario, and the Canadian First Nation (Indian) reserve of Walpole Island, but only on water boundaries in the Great Lakes system.

The Great Lakes divide Michigan into two peninsulas: the Upper Peninsula (often called simply "The U.P.") and the Lower Peninsula. They are connected only by the five-mile-long Mackinac Bridge—the third longest suspension bridge in the world. The Great Lakes which touch the two peninsulas are Lake Erie, Lake Huron, Lake Michigan and Lake Superior.

The heavily forested Upper Peninsula is mountainous; the Porcupine range, rising to an altitude of almost 2,000 feet above the sea, forming the watershed between the streams flowing into Lake Superior and Lake Michigan. The surface on either side of this range is rugged. The state's highest point is Mount Arvon at 1,979 feet (603 m). The peninsula is as large as Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island combined, but has less than 330,000 inhabitants, who are sometimes called "Yoopers" (from "U.P.'ers") and whose speech has been heavily influenced by the large number of Scandinavian and Canadian immigrants who settled the area during the mining boom of the late 1800's.

The Lower Peninsula, shaped like a mitten, is 277 miles (446 km) long from north to south and 195 miles (314 km) from east to west and occupies nearly two-thirds of the state's land area. The surface of the peninsula is generally level, broken by conical hills rising to an elevation difference not exceeding 200 feet. It is divided by a low water divide running north and south, the larger portion of the state being on the west of this and gradually sloping toward Lake Michigan. The highest point in the Lower Peninsula is not definitely established but is either Briar Hill at 1,705 feet (520 m), or one of several points closely nearby. The lowest point is the surface of Lake Erie at 571 feet (174 m).

The geographic orientation of Michigan's peninsulas make for long distances between the ends of the state. Ironwood in the far western Upper Peninsula lies 630 highway miles (1,015 km) from the Toledo, Ohio suburb of Lambertville in the Lower Peninsula's southeastern corner. This geographic isolation of the Western Upper Peninsula from Michigan's political and population centers makes it culturally and economically oriented toward neighboring Wisconsin rather than downstate Michigan, and has led to occasional calls for secession from the Lower Peninsula.

There are numerous lakes and marshes in both peninsulas, and the coast is much indented. Keweenaw, Whitefish, and the Big and Little Noquette bays are the principal indentations on the Upper Peninsula, while the Grand and Little Traverse, Thunder, and Saginaw bays indent the Lower Peninsula. Other than Alaska, Michigan has the longest shoreline of any state—2,242 miles (3,607 km). An additional 879 miles (1415 km) can be added if islands are included. This equals the length of the Atlantic Coast, from Maine to Florida. The state has numerous large islands, the principal ones being the Manitou, Beaver, and Fox groups in Lake Michigan; Isle Royale, and Grande Isle, in Lake Superior; Marquette, Bois Blanc, and Mackinac in Lake Huron; and Nebish, Sugar, and Drummond Islands in St. Mary's River.

The state's rivers are small, short and shallow, and but few are navigable. The principal ones include the Au Sable, Thunder Bay, Cheboygan, and Saginaw, flowing into Lake Huron; Ontonagon, and Tahquamenon into Lake Superior, and the St. Joseph, Kalamazoo, Grand, and Escanaba into Lake Michigan. (See List of Michigan rivers.) No point in Michigan is more than 6 miles (10 km) from an inland lake or more than 85 miles (137 km) from one of the Great Lakes, and the state has more than 11,000 inland lakes and more than 36,000 miles (58,000 km) of rivers and streams.

The geological formation of the state is greatly varied. Primary boulders are found over the entire surface, the Upper Peninsula being principally of primitive origin, while Secondary deposits cover the entire Lower Peninsula. The Upper Peninsula exhibits Lower Silurian sandstones, limestones, copper and iron bearing rocks, corresponding to the Huronian system of Canada. The central portion of the Lower Peninsula contains coal measures and rocks of the permo-Carboniferous period. Devonian and sub-Carboniferous deposits are scattered over the entire state.

The soil is of a varied composition and in large areas is very fertile, especially in the south, but the Upper Peninsula for the most part is rocky and mountainous and the soil unadapted to agriculture. The climate is tempered by the proximity of the lakes and is much milder than in other localities with the same latitude. The principal forest trees include basswood, maple, elm, sassafras, butternut, walnut, poplar, hickory, oak, willow, pine, birch, beech, hemlock, witchhazel, tamarack, cedar, locust, dogwood, and ash.

Detroit, Michigan is the only major city in the United States that is actually due north of Canada.

National parks

• Isle Royale National Park
• Keweenaw National Historical Park
• Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore
• Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore
• Father Marquette National Memorial

Economy

Michigan is primarily known as the birthplace of the automobile industry. However, it is also home to a thriving tourist industry, with destinations such as Traverse City, Mackinac Island, Saugatuck and the entire Upper Peninsula drawing vacationers, hunters and nature enthusiasts from across the United States and Canada. Although it has an urban image to non-visitors, Michigan is actually 50 percent forest, much of it quite remote. Both the forests and thousands of miles of beaches are heavy draws. Tourists also flock to many of the museums, particularly those in the Detroit area.

Hunting is a major component of Michigan's economy. Michigan ranks 1st in the nation in licensed hunters (over one million) who contribute $2 billion annually to its economy. Over three-quarters of a million hunters participate in White-tailed deer season alone. Some K-12 school districts in rural areas of Michigan go so far as to cancel school on the opening day of rifle season, due to safety and attendance concerns.

Michigan's Department of Natural Resources manages the largest dedicated state forest system in the nation. The Forest products industry and recreational users contribute $12 billion and 200,000 associated jobs annually to its economy. Michigan has more than 90 native species of trees, more than all of Europe combined.

• State income
  • The Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates that Michigan's total state product in 2003 was $365 billion. Per capital personal income in 2003 was $31,178, 20^th in the nation.
• Major industries/products
  • Automobiles (General Motors, Ford, Daimler-Chrysler), Amway, cereal (Kellogg's), copper, furniture (Steelcase, Herman Miller, Haworth), iron
• state taxes

Demographics

Michigan's total population as of 2004 was 10,112,620 (U.S. Census Bureau estimate). The state had a foreign-born population of 594,700 (5.9% of the state population).

The state's population increased by 817,000 between 1990 and 2004, an 8.8% growth

Race The racial makeup of Michigan, according to the 2000 Census:

• 80.2% Caucasian
• 14.2% African American
• 1.8% Asian American
• 0.6% Native American
• 1.9% Mixed race

The five largest reported ancestries in Michigan are: German (20.4%), African American (14.2%), Irish (10.7%), English (9.9%), Polish (8.6%). 3.3% of the population is of Hispanic origin, a category that may include members of any race.

Americans of German ancestry are present throughout most of Michigan. Nordic (especially Finnish),