Grand Rapids, MI news and local guide

The Hopewell and later the Odawa lived in the area. In 1806 the trader Joseph La Framboise and his Metis wife, Madeline, came by canoe from Mackinac Island and set up the first trading post in West Michigan on the Grand River. Joseph was stabbed to death that fall, and Madeline, widowed at 24, carried on the business, expanded it and later merged it with the American Fur Company. By 1810 the Odawa chief Noonday had founded the village of Bock-a-tinck, "at the rapids," near today's Bridge Street, with about 500 people. He fought beside Tecumseh at the Battle of the Thames in 1813, and his son, Chief Black Skin, led a second village downriver. In the 1821 Treaty of Chicago the Council of Three Fires ceded the Michigan land south of the Grand River except for a few small reservations.

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Louis Campau, a Detroit-born fur trader known as the city's official founder, built a cabin, trading post and blacksmith shop on the south bank near the rapids in 1826. He returned a year later with his wife and $5,000 in trade goods to deal with the Odawa and Ojibwe. Lucius Lyon, a Yankee surveyor, became his rival, and settlers from New York and New England poured in. Grand Rapids was incorporated as a village in 1838 and as a city in 1850. It became famous as the Furniture City for its furniture industry, which remains important, and it is the economic and cultural center of West Michigan. Sources Wikipedia: Grand Rapids, Michigan