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| Inside
Grand Rapids, Michigan |
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Welcome to Grand Rapids - where there's always something for everyone, and all of it is close by. Whether you're planning a trip or looking for weekend fun, you're in the right place!
History
of Grand Rapids
Over
2,000 years ago, people associated with the Hopewell culture occupied
the Grand River Valley. Around 1700 A.D., the Ottawa Indians moved into
the area and founded several villages along the Grand River.
The Grand Rapids area was first settled by Europeans near the start of the 19th century by missionaries and fur traders, who generally lived in reasonable peace alongside the Ottawa tribespeople, trading their European metal and textile goods for the fur pelts. Joseph and Madeline La Framboise established the first Indian/European trading post in West Michigan, on the banks of the Grand River near what is now Ada. After the death of her husband in 1806, Medaline La Framboise carried on, expanding fur trading posts to the west and north. La Framboise, a mix of French and Indian descent, later merged her successful operations with the American Fur Company and retired, at age 41, to Mackinac Island. The first permanent white settler in the Grand Rapids area was a Baptist minister named Isaac McCoy who arrived in 1825.
Furniture
City
During the second half of the 19th century the city became a major lumbering
center and the premier furniture manufacturing city of the United States.
For this reason it was nicknamed "Furniture City". After an
international exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876, Grand Rapids became
recognized worldwide as a leader in the production of fine furniture.
National home furnishing markets were held in Grand Rapids for about
75 years, concluding in the 1960s. Today, Grand Rapids is considered
a world leader in the production of office furniture. The city also
became a center of Dutch immigration in the 19th century.
Grand Rapids was a home to the first regularly scheduled passenger airline in the United States when Stout Air Services began flights from Grand Rapids to "|Detroit" (actually Ford Airport in Dearborn, Michigan) on July 31, 1926.
In 1945, Grand Rapids became the first city in the United States to add fluoride to its drinking water.
Downtown Grand Rapids used to host four department stores: Herpolsheimer's (later Lazarus), Jacobson's, Steketee's (founded in 1862), and Wurzburg's. Like most downtown regional department stores, they suffered the same fate of falling sales, caused largely by the flight to the suburbs, and consolidation in the 1980s and 1990s.
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