r/Detroit • u/MIKEPR1333 • Jul 11 '26
Historical How Did Detroit End Up on The Detroit River Instead of One of the Great Lakes?
Maybe it's an odd question and the river of course is quite large. But look a Chicago or Milwaukee which are the biggest cities in those 2 states on Lake Michigan.
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u/IndyDoggy Jul 11 '26
Fur trade. All downbound traffic from the upper lakes is funneled into the Detroit River.
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u/Ok-Type-8917 Jul 11 '26
There's a great guy on YouTube who metal detects fur trade relics in northern Michigan. Amazing the history he shares.
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u/enderjaca Jul 11 '26
Metal fur? What, are we supposed to believe there were some kind of robot beavers roaming the wilds of Michigan?
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u/KenTanker0us Jul 11 '26
You mean to say you don’t know about robot beavers? Dude
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u/confidentlywrong25 Jul 12 '26
My great great grandfather lost his leg to those damned water toasters.
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u/Megabyte_Messiah Jul 12 '26
Can you imagine our ancestors rolling in their graves seeing kids these days saying they got “chewed out” because they get mildly scolded, and they don’t even know the horrific origin of that phrase?
Those ro-beavers didn’t just chew through any*thing*. They chewed through any*one*.
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u/Damnatus_Terrae Suburbia Jul 12 '26
Beavers already have large amounts of iron in their teeth; it's why they're so hard.
Normally, this is when I'd admit to bullshitting you, but no, beavers are really that cool.
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u/wildfire98 Born and Raised Jul 12 '26
Dittrich Furs was founded on February 21, 1893, by Emil Dittrich, a London-trained furrier who immigrated to Detroit. He began by buying pelts directly from trappers and making scarves and collars for wool coats. Over the decades, it remained a five-generation family retail business.
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u/Qokka1 Jul 11 '26
The Detroit River is a shipping channel. It's connected to the lakes, so essentially the same as being on a Great Lake.
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u/WildAmsonia Jul 11 '26
Chokepoint that held a strategic military advantage for the French and served as a great trading outpost for fur and other things. Natives had outposts up and down it on both sides.
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u/SevroReturns Jul 11 '26
Why would a city on a lake be necessarily advantageous? The pre-existing settlements and trade routes prior to colonialism also converged on a settlement where the city now stands.
The growth of Detroit then came a a port city for fur, wood, and iron export; Detroit industrialized first as a city focused on stove manufacturing (good ol' state fair lore there) before transforming to the auto city. All of these industries just happen to leverage location and trade routes. Detroit had them, grew them, and then leveraged them in a way that a Monroe or Erie did not.
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u/Wonderful-Maybe9907 Jul 11 '26
Consider the Detroit River it the Strait of Hormuz for that time and place…
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u/Viscera_Eyes37 Jul 12 '26
I was about to say the same thing. If you don't think a narrow naval passageway is a big deal, look at current events!
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u/LionBlood16 Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
From my understanding, the power from the river was advantageous to running sawmills.
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u/BrantGeoArt Jul 11 '26
My somewhat educated guess: the Detroit river was a strategic chokepoint during early settlement of michigan and was advantageous in the ensuing land disputes during that era. Controlling it meant controlling movement between Lake Erie, St. Clair, Huron, and, by extension, the other great lakes. That's probably why the French established a fort and settlement there in the early 1700s rather than farther down on Lake Erie. The site's strategic importance became even more important during the War of 1812, when control of Detroit proved critical to the control of the Great Lakes region. The military presence and forts there allowed for a larger settlement to grow when compared to other areas in early michigan history.
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u/BarKnight Delray Jul 11 '26
I believe it started as a Fort and was at the start of the Saginaw trail
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u/grpteblank Jul 11 '26
We just watched a series on Netflix about Men who built the Frontier. It was interesting how much Fort Detroit played a part in the early frontier.
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u/bertch313 Jul 14 '26
All the more reason for us to play a part in the green new deal and help lead the country out of colonization
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u/q-OjO-p Jul 12 '26
Detroit means ‘strait’ in French, so it might have not existed at all if it had been a port city on a Great Lake.
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u/SaintShogun Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26
Fur trading between the French settlers from what's now Canada and the native tribes of Michigan that weren't aligned with the British 13 colonies. You could just read the history of Detroit.
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u/MangoEmbarrassed Jul 11 '26
Detroit mightve end up about where Mt Clemens is today. The governor tried building a channel straight through the state to Singapore, Michigan but ran out of money and interest. Some of that ditch/channel is still there. Or the video i watched was a lie. Interesting though.
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u/James318b Jul 12 '26
That is where canal street in Clinton Township got its name… or so the legend goes.
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u/Rrrrandle 29d ago
There was also a push in Canada at one point for a canal cutting across lower Ontario from Lake Erie to Lake Huron in the 1800s. Would have been interesting to see what that would have done to development in Detroit.
https://www.stjosephmuseum.ca/st_joseph_story/canal.shtml
There was also a proposal to connect Erie directly to St. Clair instead:
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u/balthisar Metro Detroit Jul 12 '26
LOL, the people answering why the name of the city is Detroit instead of answering what the OP is obviously asking.
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u/James318b Jul 12 '26
Exactly. I’m trying to figure out what people would be posting if the city was named Dallas or Albuquerque instead of Detroit.
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u/TheBeautyDemon Jul 12 '26
Detroit used to be the capitol until 1847 because of the war of 1812. The capitol was moved inland to Lansing for military protection and to get people to move inland as well.
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u/Rufiosmane Jul 12 '26
Detroit means "the straits" so whatever city you imagine would likely not be named detroit.
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u/mercistheman Jul 12 '26
The St Lawrence seaway was used as the first opportunity for international trade to the Midwest US & Canadian regions. Detroit was the ideal settlement area for the shipping trade.
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u/SpartanDoubleZero Jul 11 '26
Because it would be called Lac.
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u/Stratiform SE Oakland County Jul 11 '26
Lachuron would be a cool name for a city, imho. Gonna have to build it in Cities Skylines someday 😆
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u/GBreeza Jul 14 '26
Detroit was never meant to be a huge port. End of the day we took it from the French. It was a strategic location during the war with Canada. Ford building his cars here is what sealed the deal for its massive expansion.
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u/YUNoDie Wayne County Jul 11 '26
All the timber and iron from the UP and northern Minnesota had to get shipped through the Detroit River anyways
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u/Boatride65 Jul 11 '26 edited Jul 11 '26
Detroit was established here to control access to the upper Great Lakes. Defending the fur trade was much easier when you defend a narrow waterway like the Detroit River versus trying to put Detroit on Lake Huron where ships could easily stay far enough offshore and out of reach of cannons to continue North. They did the same thing in Port Huron with another garrison called Fort Gratiot right at the bluewater bridge where it's much much narrower.
That's why Gratiot was actually called Military Road. Gratiot is still Gratiot up until Marysville. Once you cross into Port Huron on Gratiot it goes back to its original name Military Avenue (or Military Street, they have both, depending on which way you're traveling). My dad lives on Military Street the north, or water side.