Detroit
Detroit is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is situated on the bank of the Detroit River across from the Canadian city of Windsor, Ontario. It is the 26th-most populous city in the United States and the largest U.S. city on the Canada–United States border, with a population of 639,111 at the 2020 census. The Metro Detroit area, at over 4.4 million people, is the 14th-largest metropolitan area in the nation and second-largest in the Midwest. The county seat of Wayne County, Detroit is a significant cultural center known for its contributions to music, art, architecture and design, in addition to its historical automotive and industrial background.
In 1701, French explorers Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac and Alphonse de Tonty founded Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it became an important industrial hub at the center of the Great Lakes region. The city's population rose to be the fourth-largest in the nation by 1920, with the expansion of the automotive industry in the early 20th century. One of its main features, the Detroit River, became the busiest commercial hub in the world. In the mid-20th century, Detroit entered a state of urban decay that has continued to the present, as a result of industrial restructuring, the loss of jobs in the auto industry, and rapid suburbanization. Since reaching a peak of 1.85 million at the 1950 census, Detroit's population has declined by more than 65 percent. In 2013, Detroit became the largest U.S. city to file for bankruptcy, but successfully exited in 2014. In 2024, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that Detroit's population grew for a second consecutive year and led population growth in Michigan for the first time since the 1950s.
Detroit is a port on the Detroit River, one of the four major straits that connect the Great Lakes system to the St. Lawrence Seaway. The city anchors the third-largest regional economy in the Midwest and the 16th-largest in the United States. It is also best known as the center of the U.S. automotive industry, and the "Big Three" auto manufacturers—General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis North America —are all headquartered in Metro Detroit. It houses the Detroit Metropolitan Airport, one of the most important hub airports in the United States. Detroit and the adjacent Canadian city of Windsor constitute the second-busiest international crossing in North America, after San Diego–Tijuana.
Detroit's culture is marked with diversity, having both local and international influences. Detroit gave rise to the music genres of Motown and techno, and also played an important role in the development of jazz, hip-hop, rock, and punk. As a result of the city's rapid growth in its boom years, Detroit has many globally unique architectural monuments and historic places. Since the 2000s, conservation efforts have managed to save many architectural pieces and achieve several large-scale revitalizations, including the restoration of several historic theaters and entertainment venues, high-rise renovations, new sports stadiums, and a riverfront revitalization project. Detroit is an increasingly popular tourist destination which caters to about 16 million visitors per year. In 2015, Detroit was designated a "City of Design" by UNESCO, the first and only U.S. city to receive this designation.
History
Toponymy
Detroit is named after the Detroit River, connecting Lake St. Clair with Lake Erie. The name comes from the French language word détroit meaning as the city was situated on a narrow north–south passage of water linking the two lakes. The river was known as le détroit du Lac Érié in the French language, which means. In historical contexts, the strait included Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River.Indigenous settlement
inhabited areas near Detroit as early as 11,000 years ago including the culture referred to as the Mound Builders. By the 17th century, the region was inhabited by Huron, Odawa, Potawatomi, and Iroquois peoples. The area is known by the Anishinaabe people as Waawiiyaataanong, translating to 'where the water curves around'.The first Europeans did not penetrate into the region and reach the straits of Detroit until French missionaries and traders worked their way around the Iroquois League, with whom they were at war in the 1630s. The Huron and Neutral people held the north side of Lake Erie until the 1650s, when the Iroquois pushed them and the Erie people away from the lake and its beaver-rich feeder streams in the Beaver Wars of 1649–1655. By the 1670s, the war-weakened Iroquois laid claim to as far south as the Ohio River valley in northern Kentucky as hunting grounds, and had absorbed many other Iroquoian peoples after defeating them in war. For the next hundred years, virtually no British or French action was contemplated without consultation with the Iroquois or consideration of their likely response.
French settlement
On July 24, 1701, the French explorer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, with his lieutenant Alphonse de Tonty, and more than a hundred other Royal French settlers traveling south and west from New France, along the St. Lawrence River valley to the Great Lakes region, began constructing a small fort on the north bank of the Detroit River. Cadillac named the settlement Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit, after Louis Phélypeaux, comte de Pontchartrain, the Secretary of State of the Navy under King Louis XIV in the Royal government in Paris. Sainte-Anne de Détroit was founded on July 26 and is the second-oldest continuously operating Roman Catholic parish in the United States. France offered free land to colonists to attract families further west into the Great Lakes region interior of the North American continent to Detroit; when it eventually reached a population of about 800 by 1765, after the colonial conflict of the French and Indian War,, it became the largest European settlement between the important towns of Montreal and New Orleans, both also French settlements, in the former colonies of New France and La Louisiane, respectively. The region's then colonial economy was based on the lucrative fur trade, in which numerous Native American peoples had important roles as trappers and traders.British rule
During the French and Indian War —the North American front of the Seven Years' War in Europe between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of France—British troops gained control of the settlement a few years into the conflict in 1760 and shortened its name to Detroit. Several regional Native American tribes, such as the Potowatomi, Ojibwe and Huron, launched Pontiac's War, and laid siege in 1763 to Fort Detroit along the Detroit River in the Great Lakes but failed to capture it. In defeat, France ceded its territory in North America of New France and south of the lakes east of the Mississippi to the Appalachian Mountains to Britain following the war.When Great Britain evicted France from its colonial possessions in New France in the peace terms of the Treaty of Paris of 1763, it also removed one barrier to American colonists migrating west across the mountains. British negotiations with the Iroquois would both prove critical and lead to the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which limited settlements South of and below the Great Lakes and west of the Alleghenies / Appalachians. Many colonists and pioneers in the Thirteen Colonies along the East Coast, resented and then simply defied this restraint, later becoming supporters of the rebellious American Revolution. By 1773, after the addition of increasing numbers of the Anglo-American settlers, the population of Detroit and Fort Detroit, was edging up to 1,400. During the American Revolutionary War, the indigenous and loyalist raids of 1778 and the resultant 1779 decisive Sullivan Expedition reopened the Ohio Country to even more westward emigration, which began almost immediately to get away from the eastern warfare. By 1778, its population had doubled again, reaching 2,144 and it was the third-largest town in what was known then as the Province of Quebec since the British takeover of former French colonial possessions in North America in 1763.
After the American Revolutionary War and the establishment and recognition of the United States as an independent country, the Great Britain ceded Detroit and other territories in the interior region of the continent, south of the Great Lakes and west of the Appalachian Mountains to the Mississippi River under the peace of the terms of the 1783 Treaty of Paris. The new Northwest Territories established the southern border with Great Britain's remaining colonial provinces in British North America and became provinces of Upper Canada and Lower Canada. However, the disputed border area remained under British control with several military forts and trading posts for another decade, and its forces did not fully withdraw until 1796, following the negotiations and ratification of the subsequent Jay Treaty of 1794 between the British and Americans. By the turn of the 19th century, white American settlers began pouring westwards across the Appalachians and through the Great Lakes.
Legacy
Today the municipal flag of Detroit reflects both its French and English colonial heritage. Descendants of the earliest French and French-Canadian settlers formed a cohesive community, who gradually were superseded as the dominant population after more Anglo-American settlers arrived in the early 19th century with American westward migration. Living along the shores of Lake St. Clair and south to Monroe and downriver suburbs, the ethnic French Canadians of Detroit, also known as Muskrat French in reference to the fur trade, remain a subculture in the region up into the 21st century.Post-revolutionary period and 19th century
The Great Detroit Fire of 1805 destroyed most of the city's wooden buildings, leaving only a stone fort, a river warehouse, and brick chimneys from former homes. Despite the extensive damage, none of Detroit's 600 residents perished. The aftermath of the fire left a lasting legacy on the city's heritage. Father Gabriel Richard coined the city motto, "Speramus Meliora; Resurget Cineribus," as he surveyed the ruins. The city seal, designed in 1827, directly depicted the fire by showing two women, one grieving the destruction while the other gestures toward a new city rising from the ashes. The seal forms the center of Detroit's flag.From 1805 to 1847, Detroit served as the capital city of the Michigan Territory and later became its first state capital in January 1837 after Michigan's admission to the Union. During the War of 1812, Detroit became a focal point of conflict. U.S. Army commander William Hull surrendered Fort Detroit without a fight after the city was cut off from American support assembling at the River Raisin. Later, the U.S. attempted to retake the fort and town during the Battle of Frenchtown in January 1813, a significant victory for the British. The battle is commemorated at the River Raisin National Battlefield Park near Monroe, Michigan. Detroit was eventually recaptured later that year.
Detroit was officially incorporated as a city in 1815, and its urban design was influenced by the grand boulevards of Washington, D.C. Michigan Territorial Chief Justice Augustus B. Woodward, who played a key role in the city's development, designed a geometric street plan that included wide avenues and plazas.
Before the American Civil War, Detroit's position along the Canada-U.S. border made it a vital stop on the Underground Railroad. Thousands of enslaved African Americans escaped to Canada via the city. Notable activists like George DeBaptiste, William Lambert, and Laura Smith Haviland played key roles in assisting refugees. Detroit's contributions to the Union effort were also significant, with many residents volunteering to fight. The city's 24th Michigan Infantry Regiment, part of the famous Iron Brigade, suffered heavy casualties at the Battle of Gettysburg. The city's tensions over race, in tandem with national concerns over the draft, led to the Detroit race riot of 1863, leaving some dead and over 200 Black residents homeless. This prompted the establishment of a full-time police force in 1865.
In the late 19th century, Detroit grew as a hub for industry, particularly shipping and manufacturing. The city's wealth, driven by industrial magnates, led to the construction of opulent Gilded Age mansions along the grand avenues designed by Woodward. Detroit earned the nickname "Paris of the West" for its architectural beauty. By 1896, Henry Ford's first automobile was built in the city, and Detroit expanded its borders, annexing surrounding villages and townships as it solidified its place as a key player in the automobile industry.