Books › Saginaw City Directory 1927, 1927 › scan 6
Scan 6
Saginaw City Directory 1927, 1927
25 lines. Read by computer on 17 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
A town on its own line is one of the directory's headings. That is where the town on a maker's page comes from.
1SAGINAW
2The Capital and Judicial Seat of Saginaw County, Michigan, Its Commercial, Financial and Industrial Advantages
3(By courtesy Secretary Saginaw Board of Commerce.)
5The metropolis of north-eastern Michigan and the judicial seat of Saginaw county, the city is situated on the Saginaw river, approximately 90 miles north-west of Detroit and in the geographical center of the fertile Saginaw valley. Three main railroad systems, the Pere Marquette, Michigan Central and Grand Trunk and the one interurban line, the Michigan Railway System, connect Saginaw with every part of the state. Five divisions of the Pere Marquette and two of the Michigan Central center in Saginaw.
7Saginaw is the one-time center of the lumbering industry in Michigan, which, when the lumber gave out, made good its transition into a modern manufacturing city with varied interests which have tided her through every storm that has shaken American business and led her into a continuous normal growth.
9Sharing in the development of the automobile business in Michigan, the center of the Michigan coal fields with their heavy production of bituminous coal, the center of Michigan oil fields, the place of manufacture of dozens of articles of nation-wide fame, Saginaw besides is the center of one of the finest agricultural districts in the United States. Its farms are an effective complement to the efforts of the city people and furnish an ever increasing field for the city's business activities.
11FUR TRADERS FIRST SETTLERS
12The foundations for the city of Saginaw were laid soon after the beginning of the nineteenth century. It was in 1816 that Louis Campau, French fur trader, came to Saginaw and built the first permanent habitation ever constructed in the Saginaw valley by a white man.
14Campau continued his trading, and year by year other hardy adventurers, attracted by the fur trade, came to the valley. For the most part the Indians were friendly, though there were occasional hostilities, mostly of a minor character.
16In Saginaw, near Campau's old fur trading post, was laid the scene of the transaction which added a large part of Michigan to the domain of the United States. In 1819 General Lewis Cass, hero of the War of 1812, came to Saginaw at the direction of the United States government and negotiated the treaty with the Indians which gave the fertile Saginaw valley and other portions of Michigan to the United States. Later a fort was built on the site of the present city; and garrisoned for a time by troops of the United States army.
18FIRST LUMBER MILL BUILT
19It was about 1830 that the bolder spirits of the valley, who had begun to recognize the possibilities latent in the great forests of Michigan, commenced to make practical application of their foresight.
21In 1834 the first mill was built on the Saginaw river to saw the logs from the luxuriant pine forests of Michigan. It was the start of a tremendous period of development for the valley. During the next half century lumber was the main-spring of the Saginaw valley's activities. It is said that more white pine was floated down the Saginaw river than on any other river in the world, and at one time more than 100 mills, large and small, lined its banks.
23CITIES ARE CONSOLIDATED
24The city of Saginaw, on the west side of the Saginaw river and clustered around the site of the old fort, was first in 1832. Within the next few years another settlement, on the east side of the river, known as East Saginaw, was growing up and this in turn was incorporated in 1848. A third settlement, Salina, so named from the great salt deposits of the valley, which were developed about the same time as the lumber indus-
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