Lansing, MI news and local guide

Historians have long complained about a myth of Lansing's founding. The story goes that in 1835 and 1836 two brothers from New York platted a town called Biddle City in a floodplain south of downtown, sold lots to people in Lansing, New York, for a city with 65 blocks and a church that did not exist, and that the 16 buyers who arrived, swindled and without money to move on, stayed and settled the area. The tale spread from a 1904 newspaper article based on the memories of Daniel W. Buck, a respected mayor and son of a pioneer. The brothers were in fact William and Jerry Ford, well-regarded businessmen from Jackson, who in 1836 bought 290 acres in the northwest corner of Ingham County and platted Biddle City where the Grand and Red Cedar rivers meet, in today's REO Town. The "land scam" story was wrong, though it held some truth. Lansing is counted as founded in 1835 and was named Michigan's capital in 1847, chosen for its more central location after concerns about Detroit's vulnerability to British attack, which dated to the War of 1812. It later became a major center of the automobile industry. Sources Wikipedia: Lansing, Michigan