Grand Rapids, Michigan

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Grand Rapids is a city located in the territory of Michigan. The city is located along the Grand River near Lake Michigan. The population of the city of Grand Rapids is about 188 000 people. The city is the center of the county of Kent.

Grand Rapids is known for being the hometown of the thirty-eighth U.S. president Gerald Ford. The president and his wife Betty Ford are buried in the land of the Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids.

The history of Grand Rapids began two thousand years ago, when in these places lived, people of the culture Hopewell. They lived in Grand Valley. In the seventeenth century, the Indians Ottawa made settlements along the Grand River.

Europeans appeared in Grand Rapids at the beginning of the nineteenth century. These were mainly missionaries and fur traders. They settled near the settlements of the tribe of Ottawa Indians to be able to trade with them. The Indians sold their pelts for clothing and metal objects.

The first Indian-European trading post was founded by Joseph and Madeline La Framboise.

That is exactly where today the town of Grand Rapids is located. After her husband died in 1806, Madeline La Framboise continued to work at the point and even expanded its business to set up similar stations in the north and west of it. 

Madeline La Framboise was well understood by the Indians, as in her veins flowed French and Indian blood. When she was forty-one years old, Madeline La Framboise ended her activities and went to Mackinac Island. The first European who settled permanently in the area of Grand Rapids was Isaac McCoy, a Baptist minister, who arrived in 1825.

In 1826 arrived Louis Campau, who founded the city of Grand Rapids. He built a new trading post and a blacksmith near Grand River. Campo went to Detroit, where he was born, and returned a year later with his wife and goods worth five thousand dollars, to exchange with the Indians.

In 1831 were founded the borders of the county of Kent, which was named after the famous lawyer from New York, James Kent. In the same year, Campo bought seventy-two acres, which today represent the center of Grand Rapids. He bought the land for ninety dollars and called it Grand Rapids. Lucius Lyon, who bought an adjacent parcel, called it the village of Kent. In the thirties of the twentieth century immigrants began to settle in the region.

In 1838, the village was recognized as a village, in which at that time lived fifteen hundred people. In 1850 Grand Rapids was recognized as a city. Its population was 2686 persons. In 1880 the city started the first hydroelectric generator. In 1945 the city of Grand Rapids became the first city in the U.S. to add fluoride to drinking water.