Timeline of Michigan history

Natural history

• 13000 BC to 12000 BC The most recent of four major glaciers (Wisconsin glaciation) started to recede leaving a tundra like environment. The melting ice formed the Great Lakes, the Upper Peninsula and Lower Peninsula (in the Michigan Basin)
• 12800 BC Mastodons and other ice age mammals started to appear in the fossil record
• 11000 BC to 9000 BC Archeological evidence of Paleo-Indians in the form of sharpened stone tool points known as fluted biface appears

Early human history

• 11000 BC to 4000 BC Palieo-Indian period
• 4000 BC to 2500 BC Archaic period
• 2500 BC to 1000 Woodland period
• 1000 to 1860 Algonquian groups including Menominee (South central Upper Peninsula), Ojibwa (Eastern Upper Peninsula), Ottawa (Eastern Upper Peninsula, Canada), Potawatomi (Western lower Michigan), Mascouten (Western and central southern lower Michigan), Sauk (Eastern central lower Michigan), Fox (Eastern lower Michigan, near Lake Huron), Kickapoo (Southeastern corner of lower Michigan), Miami (Southwestern corner of lower Michigan)

French colonization

• 1621 or 1622 Étienne Brûlé and his fellow companion named Grenolle paddled up the St. Mary's River and entered Lake Superior
• 1634 Jean Nicolet guided by the Wyandot passed through the Straits of Mackinac and followed the southern shoreline of the Upper Peninsula en route to find the Ho-Chunk and the imagined passage to the Pacific.
• 1641 Jesuit priests Isaac Jogues and Charles Raymbault ventured the same route as Brûlé finding many Ojibwa at the St. Mary's River rapids and named it Sault Ste. Marie.
• 1653 The Iroquois Wars virtually emptied the lower peninsula of Native Americans and cut off the Ottawa River route and the St. Lawrence River route into Michigan.
• 1659 Pierre-Esprit Radisson and Médard des Groseilliers ventured to western Lake Superior with an envoy of fur trading Native Americans returning from Montreal.
• 1661 Father René Menard retraced the route of Radisson and Groseilliers to find the Wyandot, wintered in L'Anse, and then disappeared traveling inland from Chequamegon Bay.
• 1665 Claude-Jean Allouez and six Voyageurs retraced Menard's route to find him and the Wyandot, they reported copper deposits in the Keweenaw Peninsula area.
• 1668 Père (Father) Jacques Marquette established Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, the first European settlement in Michigan.
• 1669 Jean Talon sent Adrien Jolliet on a mission to investigate the Allouez copper reports, An Iroquois warior guided his return trip along eastern shoreline of the lower peninsula and down the St. Clair River and Detroit River.
• 1671 June 14 - "The Pageant of the Sault" at Sault Ste. Marie, four Jesuit priests led by Father Claude-Jean Allouez representing the Roman Catholic Church, and Simon Francois Daumont St. Lusson held aloft a sword and a symbolic tuft of sod, and declared to the Native Americans that all of the Great Lakes country was henceforth a possession of King Louis XIV of France.
• 1671 Father Claude Dablon took over the mission at the Sault and Marquette moved to establish a mission at St. Ignace
• 1679 René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle sailes Le Griffon to St. Ignace and on to an island at the inlet of green bay, departes with 14 men from there via canoe south on Lake Michigan and establishes Fort Miami
• 1680 La Salle abandons Fort Miami and makes an overland trip across the Lower Peninsula
• 1683 Louis de la Porte, Sieur de Louvigny and 150 French soldiers established Fort de Buade at St. Ignace
• 1684 The mission of St. Joseph was established in Niles by Claude-Jean Allouez
• 1686 Daniel Greysolon, Sieur du Lhut established Fort St. Joseph (Port Huron) in what is now Port Huron
• 1691 Marquis de Denonville sent Augustin Legardeur de Courtemanche to establish Fort St. Joseph (Niles) at the Jesuit mission that had been formed there around 1684
• 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, today the city of Detroit. Their wives join them and are claimed to be 'the first European women in Michigan'.
• 1710 Cadillac is removed from Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit under a cloud of greed and replaced by Dubuisson, On his way out Cadillac invites the Fox to live around the fort.
• 1712 The Fox are not welcomed by the tribes living around Detroit and Dubuisson orders them to leave, they refuse and a fight breaks out for 19 days.
• 1715 Fort de Buade is abandoned and Fort Michilimackinac is constructed in what is now Mackinaw City, Michigan
• 1720 to 1744 A period of peace, fur trading and little expansion in New France (what would become Michigan)
• 1744 to 1754 Conflicts surrounding the fur trade begin in the Ohio Valley between New France and the Thirteen Colonies
• 1754 The French and Indian War unofficially begins with the Battle of Jumonville Glen

British colonization

• 1758 Fort Frontenac was captured by British forces cutting off New France's St. Lawrence River supply and communication conduits into Michigan.
• 1760 Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit was peacefully turned over to the British after Quebec was defeated
• 1763: Treaty of Paris (1763) - France cedes all lands in North America in New France east of the Mississippi River to Great Britain
• 1763 Chief Pontiac led a major revolt of the Ottawa tribe against the British, besieging Fort Detroit.
• 1763: George III of the United Kingdom in the Royal Proclamation of 1763 proclaims that the newly acquired North American land except Quebec, West Florida and East Florida will be an Indian Reserve prohibiting settlement without British permission west of the Appalachian Mountains.
• 1774: Parliament of Great Britain passes the Quebec Act which expands Quebec's borders south to the Ohio River
• 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. territory

• 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 what is now 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.

As a U.S. state

• 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 The Patriot War saw Irish nationalists invade Canada from southeast Michigan.
• 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 Under the leadership of Dr. Albertus van Raalte, Dutch Calvinist separatists founded Holland in southwest Michigan.
• 1847 A law was passed by the State Legislature to re-locate the state capital from Detroit 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 female governor, Jennifer Granholm (D).

External links

• Chronology of Michigan History (PDF). Found at www.legislature.mi.gov.
• History at Michigan.gov
• Michigan History Magazine
• The History of Milford Michigan