|
Grand Rapids is the second-largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan, and the largest city in West Michigan. It is located on the Grand River about 30 miles east of Lake Michigan. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 188,040. In 2010, the Grand Rapids metropolitan area had a population of 1,005,648, and the combined statistical area of Grand Rapids-Muskegon-Holland had a population of 1,321,557. Grand Rapids is the county seat of Kent County, Michigan. A historic furniture-manufacturing center, Grand Rapids is still home to five of the world's leading office furniture companies, and is nicknamed ''Furniture City''. Its more common modern nickname of ''River City'' refers to the landmark river for which it was named. The city and surrounding communities are economically diverse, based in the health care, information technology, automotive, aviation, and consumer goods manufacturing industries, among others. Grand Rapids is the hometown of U.S. President Gerald Ford, who is buried with his wife Betty on the grounds of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in the city. == History == For thousands of years, succeeding cultures of indigenous peoples occupied this area. Over 2,000 years ago, people associated with the Hopewell culture occupied the Grand River Valley. Around A.D. 1700, the Ottawa, who occupied territory around the Great Lakes and spoke one of the numerous Algonquian languages, moved into the area and founded several villages along the Grand River. At the start of the 19th century, European fur traders (mostly French Canadian and Métis) and missionaries established posts in the area among the Ottawa. They generally lived in reasonable peace, trading European metal and textile goods for fur pelts. Joseph and his wife Madeline La Framboise, who was Métis, established the first trading post in West Michigan, and in present Grand Rapids, on the banks of the Grand River near what is now Ada. They were French-speaking and Roman Catholic. They likely both spoke Ottawa, Madeline's maternal ancestral language. After the death of her husband in 1806, Madeline La Framboise carried on, expanding fur trading posts to the west and north. La Framboise, whose mother was Ottawa and father French, later merged her successful operations with the American Fur Company. She retired at age 41 to Mackinac Island. The first permanent European-American settler in the Grand Rapids area was Isaac McCoy, a Baptist minister, who established a missionary station in 1825.〔Goss, Dwight. ''The Indians of the Grand River Valley,'' In (''Michigan Historical Collections'' ), Vol. 30, pp. 178-80 (1906).〕 He represented the European-American settlers who started arriving from Ohio, New York and New England, the Yankee states of the Northern Tier. In 1826 Detroit-born Louis Campau, the official founder of Grand Rapids, built his cabin, trading post, and blacksmith shop on the east bank of the Grand River near the rapids. Campau returned to Detroit, then returned a year later with his wife and $5,000 of trade goods to trade with the Ottawa and Ojibwe. In 1831 the federal survey of the Northwest Territory reached the Grand River; it set the boundaries for Kent County, named after prominent New York jurist James Kent. Campau became perhaps the most important settler when, in 1831, he bought 72 acres (291,000 m²) from the federal government for $90 and named his tract Grand Rapids. Over time, it developed as today's main downtown business district.〔 Rival Lucius Lyon, a Yankee Protestant who purchased the rest of the prime land, called his the Village of Kent. Yankee migrants (primarily English-speaking settlers) and others began migrating from New York and New England in the 1830s. Ancestors of these people included not only English colonists but people of mixed ethnic Dutch, Mohawk, French Canadian and French Huguenot descent from the colonial period in New York. In 1836 John Ball, representing a group of New York land speculators, bypassed Detroit for a better deal in Grand Rapids. Ball declared the Grand River valley "the promised land, or at least the most promising one for my operations". By 1838, the settlement incorporated as a village, and encompassed an area of approximately three-quarters of a mile (1 km) . The first formal census occurred in 1845, which recorded a population of 1,510 and an area of four square miles. The city of Grand Rapids was incorporated April 2, 1850. It was officially established on May 2, 1850, when the village of Grand Rapids voted to accept the proposed city charter. The population at the time was 2,686. By 1857, the city of Grand Rapids' area totaled . In 1880, the country's first hydro-electric generator was put to use on the city's west side. Grand Rapids was an early center for the automobile industry, as the Austin Automobile Company operated here from 1901 until 1921. In 1945, Grand Rapids became the first city in the United States to add fluoride to its drinking water. Downtown Grand Rapids, when the center of business, used to host four department stores: Herpolsheimer's (Lazarus in 1987), Jacobson's, Steketee's (founded in 1862), and Wurzburg's. Shopping was a community event. As with many older cities, these businesses suffered as the population moved to suburbs in the postwar era with federal subsidization of highway construction. In addition, retail changes in buying habits affected business. Consolidation of department stores occurred here and nationally in the 1980s and 1990s. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Grand Rapids, Michigan」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|