Dearborn, Michigan


Dearborn is a city in Wayne County in the U.S. state of Michigan. An inner-ring suburb of Detroit, Dearborn borders Detroit to the north and east, roughly west of downtown Detroit. In the 2020 census, it had a population of 109,976, ranking as the seventh-most populous city in Michigan. Dearborn is best known as the hometown of the Ford Motor Company and of its founder, Henry Ford.
The first written settlement of Dearborn is from the 18th century by French Canadian voyageurs who initially called the settlement La Belle Fontaine or Place aux Fontaines because of the abundant springs in the city. Therefore, Dearborn was once named Springwells, an anglicization of the French name. The settlement was connected to the Detroit River ribbon farm communities and other farms connected to the Rouge River and the Sauk Trail. The community grew in the 19th century with the establishment of the Detroit Arsenal on the Chicago Road linking Detroit and Chicago. During the 20th century, it developed as a major manufacturing hub for the automotive industry.
Henry Ford was born on a farm that was once at the intersection of Ford Road and Greenfield Road. Ford later built his estate, Fair Lane, and his River Rouge Complex, the largest factory of his empire, in Dearborn. He developed mass production of automobiles, and based the world headquarters of the Ford Motor Company here. The city has a campus of the University of Michigan, and Henry Ford College. The Henry Ford is the largest indoor-outdoor historic museum complex in the United States, and Metro Detroit's leading tourist attraction.
Dearborn residents are Americans primarily of European or Middle Eastern ancestry, many descendants of 19th and 20th-century immigrants. The census identifies primary European ethnicities as German, Polish, Irish, and Italian. New waves of immigration came from the Middle East in the late 20th century, mostly Muslims and far fewer Christians minorities from Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. Dearborn has the proportionally largest Muslim population in the United States and the largest mosque in North America. In 2023, Dearborn became the first Arab-majority city in the US, with 55% of its residents claiming to be of Middle Eastern or North African ancestry in a 2023 survey.

History

Before European encounter, the area had been inhabited for thousands of years by successive First Nations peoples. Historical tribes belonged mostly to the Algonquian-language family, especially the Council of Three Fires, the Potawatomi and related peoples. In contrast, the Huron were Iroquoian speaking. French colonists had a trading post at Fort Detroit and a settlement developed there in the colonial period. Another developed on the south side of the Detroit River in what is now southwestern Ontario, near a Huron mission village. French and French-Canadian colonists also established farms at Dearborn in this period. France ceded all of its territory east of the Mississippi River in North America to Great Britain in 1763 after losing to Britain in the Seven Years' War.
Beginning in 1786, after the United States gained independence in the American Revolutionary War, more European Americans entered this region, settling in Detroit and the Dearborn area. With population growth, Dearborn Township was formed in 1833 and the village of Dearbornville in 1836, each named after Henry Dearborn, a general in the American Revolution who became Secretary of War under President Thomas Jefferson. The Town of Dearborn was incorporated in 1893. Through much of the 19th century, the area was largely rural and dependent on agriculture.
Stimulated by industrial development in Detroit and within its own limits, in 1927 Dearborn was established as a city. Its current borders result from a 1928 consolidation vote that merged Dearborn and neighboring Fordson, which feared being absorbed into expanding Detroit.
According to historian James W. Loewen, in his book Sundown Towns, Dearborn discouraged African Americans from settling in the city. In the early 20th century, both white and black people migrated to Detroit for industrial jobs. Over time, some city residents moved to the suburbs. Many of Dearborn's residents "took pride in the saying, 'The sun never set on a Negro in Dearborn. According to Orville Hubbard, the segregationist mayor of Dearborn from 1942 to 1978, "as far as he was concerned, it was against the law for a Negro to live in his suburb." Hubbard told the Montgomery Advertiser in the mid-1950s, "Negroes can't get in here. Every time we hear of a Negro moving in, we respond quicker than you do to a fire."
The area between Dearborn and Fordson was undeveloped, and remains so in part. Once farm land, much of this property was bought by Henry Ford for his estate, Fair Lane, and for the Ford Motor Company World Headquarters. Later developments in this corridor were the Ford airport, and other Ford administrative and development facilities.
More recent additions are The Henry Ford, the Henry Ford Centennial Library, the super-regional shopping mall Fairlane Town Center, and the Ford Performing Arts Center. The open land is planted with sunflowers and often with Ford's favorite crop of soybeans. The crops are never harvested.
The Arab American National Museum opened in 2005, the first museum in the world devoted to Arab American history and culture. Arab Americans in Dearborn include descendants of Lebanese Christians who immigrated in the early twentieth century to work in the auto industry, and more recent Arab immigrants and their descendants from other, primarily Muslim nations.
On February 2, 2024, the Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece titled "Welcome to Dearborn, America's Jihad Capital", reporting that there were a large number of supporters of Islamic extremism in the area. Mayor Abdullah Hammoud said the article was inflammatory and was responsible for increased online hate speech against the city's citizens, so he increased police patrols.

Geography

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of, of which is land and is water. The city developed on both sides of the Rouge River. An artificial waterfall/low head dam was constructed by Henry Ford on his estate to power its powerhouse. The Upper, Middle, and Lower Branches of the river come together in Dearborn. The river is widened and channeled near the Rouge Plant to allow lake freighter access.
Fordson Island is an island about three miles upriver on the River Rouge from its confluence with the Detroit River. It is the only major island in a tributary to the Detroit River. It was created in 1922 when engineers dug a secondary trench to reroute the River Rouge to increase navigability for shipping purposes, and businesses needed it to be navigable by the large lake freighters. The island is privately owned, has no public access, and is part of the city of Dearborn which has no frontage along the Detroit River.
Dearborn is among a small number of municipalities that own property in other cities. It owns the Camp Dearborn in Milford, Michigan, which is located from Dearborn. Dearborn was among an even smaller number of cities that hold property in another state. For a time, the city owned the Dearborn Towers apartment complex in Clearwater, Florida, but this has been sold. Camp Dearborn is considered part of the city of Dearborn. Revenues generated by camp admissions are incorporated into the city's budget.

Climate

Demographics

2020 census

In 2020, 54.5% of the population reported Middle Eastern or North African ancestry. The most reported detailed ancestries were:
As of the 2010 census, the population of Dearborn was 98,153. The racial and ethnic composition was 89.1% White, 4.0% black or African-American, 0.2% Native American, 1.7% Asian, 0.2% Non-Hispanic of some other race, 4.0% reporting two or more races and 3.4% Hispanic or Latino. 41.7% were of Arab ancestry.

2000 census

In the 2000 census, 61.9% spoke only English at home, 29.3% spoke Arabic, 1.9% Spanish, and 1.5% Polish. There were 36,770 households, out of which 31.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 51.0% were married couples living together, 9.4% had a female householder with no husband present, and 35.1% were non-families. 30.9% of all households were made up of individuals, and 14.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.65 and the average family size was 3.42.
In the city, 27.8% of the population was under the age of 18, 8.3% was from 18 to 24, 29.2% from 25 to 44, 19.1% from 45 to 64, and 15.6% was 65 years of age or older. The median age was 34 years. For every 100 females, there were 99.0 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 96.5 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $44,560, and the median income for a family was $53,060. Males had a median income of $45,114 versus $33,872 for females. The per capita income for the city was $21,488. About 12.2% of families and 16.1% of the population were below the poverty line, including 24.4% of those under age 18 and 7.6% of those age 65 and over.
As of the 2012 estimate, Dearborn's population was thought to have fallen to 96,474, a decrease of 1.7% since 2010. Over the same period, though, SEMCOG, the local statistics agency of Metro Detroit Council of Governments, has estimated the city to have grown to 99,001, or an increase of 1.2% since 2000. SEMCOG's July 2014 estimate listed Dearborn with a population of 102,566.

Ethnic groups

Dearborn has a large community of descendants of ethnic Europeans who arrived as immigrants from the mid-19th into the 20th centuries. Their ancestors generally first settled in Detroit: Irish, German, Italians, and Polish. It is also a center of Maltese American settlement, from the Mediterranean island of Malta. Also attracted to jobs in the auto industry, some were among immigrant Maltese who first settled in Corktown.
The city has a small African-American population, many of whose ancestors came to the area from the rural South during the Great Migration of the early twentieth century.
The city's population includes 40,000 Arab Americans. Per the 2000 census, Arab Americans totaled 29,181 or 29.85% of Dearborn's population; many are descendants of families who have been in the city since the early 20th century. The city has the largest proportion of Arab Americans in the United States, and has been called the "Capital of Arab America". As of 2006 Dearborn had the largest Lebanese American population in the United States.
The first Arab immigrants came in the early-to-mid-20th century to work in the automotive industry and were chiefly Christians from Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria. Other immigrants from the Middle East, such as Assyrians, have also immigrated to the area. Since then, immigrants from Yemen, Iraq and Palestine, most of whom are Muslim, have joined them. Lebanese Americans comprise the largest group of ethnic Arabs. The Arab Muslim community has built the Islamic Center of America serving the Arab Shia Muslim community and the American Moslem Society serving the Arab Sunni Muslim community. More Iraqi refugees have come, fleeing the continued war in their country since 2003.
Warren Avenue has become the commercial center of the Arab-American community. The Arab American National Museum is located in Dearborn. The museum was opened in January 2005 to celebrate the Arab-American community's history, culture and contributions to the United States.
In the 2019 U.S. Census estimates, the largest ethnic group were Lebanese Americans, and the second largest were Yemeni Americans. In 2025, Police Chief Ahmed Haidar unilaterally released an image of a police badge featuring Arabic script on social media. The police department later removed the post, and the city's mayor issued a statement rescinding the badge.