Did you know that in 1608, Antoine Laumet de la Mothe Cadillac, a businessmen and former French commander, wanted to establish an outpost along the entrance to the western Great Lakes? He petitioned Louis XIV in Paris to reconsider western exploration and suggested a fort on le detroit -- "the strait" in French -- an 80-mile waterway linking Lake Erie and Lake Huron.
That stretch of water today is known as the Detroit River, Lake St. Clair and the St. Clair River.
Bonus tidbit: The Detroit River has 21 islands, the largest of which is 10-square-mile Grosse Ile.
Some of the other islands include Belle Isle, Bois Blanc, Horse, Fox, Grassy, Hickory, Calf, Mud, Stony, Sugar, Swan and Zug. Several of them have no inhabitants.If I had to choose one to live on, I'd go with 29-acre Sugar Island. It just sounds good. But I'd be the only islander -- just me and the sugar maple trees.
Source: The Detroit Almanac: 300 years of life in the Motor City.
2 comments:
I'll live there with you. This is Gina, by the way, but Paul is logged in.
If you do, I'll cook you dinner every day! And I'll plant a sunflower garden just for you.
And I'll even paddle back and forth to the mainland once a week to get those big snowman cookies sugar cookies you like.
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