Early History
The Early History of Lincoln Park
by Frank Rathbun
Courtesy of The News Herald (originally published in The Mellus Newspapers)
The history of Lincoln Park would be brief if it included only the period since its incorporation as a village (1921) and later as a city (1925). However, the territory from which Lincoln Park was carved has a past which is rich in historic drama. The entire Downriver section was once the hunting grounds of the Potowatomi Indians. Today's car-packed highways were once tree-shaded trails for the Redman and for the game he sought - deer, bear, fox and other fur bearers.
Possibly the most important and far-reaching Indian council ever assembled was held in what is now Lincoln Park in 1763, when the great Ottawa Chieftain Pontiac called the Indians of the midwest together to plot the destruction of the encroaching white man. History does not tell the exact location of the great assembly, which drew warriors and chiefs from every tribe and nation of Indians in the Great Lakes Region. We know only that it was held on the banks of the Ecorse River. Tradition relates, however, that the Indians met near the confluence of the north and south branches of the Ecorse River, near the neck of land which still bears the name "Council Point" or Pontiac Point. The tepees of the huge band of warriors were probably erected throughout what is now Lincoln Park.
The Historical Society of Lincoln Park has erected a marker honoring Pontiac in Council Point Park, River Drive at the foot of LeBlanc Street. [addendum: The marker has since been relocated to Council Point Park at River Drive and New York Street]
Although Pontiac's conspiracy resulted in the overthrow of many English Forts west of the Alleghenies, Pontiac himself failed to take his prime objective - Fort Detroit; and his long-range goal of driving out the white man was smashed. Pontiac died a few years later by the hand of a fellow Indian; and his people began a slow retreat, which ended in their virtual extinction.
Only thirteen years after Pontiac's ill-fated war council, leading chiefs of the Potowatomi Nation deeded a huge tract of land to a Frenchman living at Detroit - Pierre St. Cosme. That grant, dated July 1, 1776, four days before the American Declaration of Independence was adopted, gave St. Cosme and his two sons a piece of property which included most of present-day Ecorse, Lincoln Park, Allen Park and part of Wyandotte. [addendum:This area became incorporated in 1827 as a part of Ecorse Township.]
Fronting the Detroit River, approximately half a mile each side of the Ecorse River, the property extended approximately four miles back from the river. Its northern boundary followed what is now Southfield Road, while its southern flank followed a line close to present-day Goddard Road. [addendum: for well over a century what is now Southfield Road was named St. Cosme Line Road.]
St. Cosme, for "love and affection," had been given a tract of land which today is worth untold millions of dollars.
After the close of the Revolutionary War, ownership of the Great Lakes region passed from England to the United States of America. The new nation, beset by internal difficulties, could not enforce its claim however; and the British remained in actual possession until 1796. [addendum: added to these difficulties was forceful opposition by the Indian Nations to any American encroachment. The Indians and the British together would continue to prove a powerful resistance until their later defeat at the close of the War of 1812 and the Treaty of Ghent.]
St. Cosme died in 1787, and his wife and sons proceeded to sell the Downriver property to French farmers living in Detroit and Windsor.
Among the early families who settled along the Detroit River near the mouth of the Ecorse River, were the Campaus, Salliottes, Labadies, LeBlancs, Goodells, Bondies, Drouillards and many others.
The early settlers purchased "strip farms" [addendum: known also as ribbon farms] only a few hundred yards wide on the riverfront but extending back into the forest for several miles. The St. Cosme land grant farms fronted on the Detroit River, while other farms fronted on the Rouge River and ended on the northern edge of the St. Cosme property, which became known as the St. Cosme Line.
As the years went by and the families grew, new generations built homes farther back from the rivers; and early in the 1800's, the first homes were probably built in what was to become Lincoln Park. The first settlement was not made near the present center of the city, however, but along the southern edge near Goddard Road. An old map of the area, made about 1818 by Bela Hubbard, shows homes only in this section, which, strangely enough, today is one of the city's few remaining vacant areas.
Among the early settlers in the Lincoln Park area were the Monties, who settled along the street which now bears the family name; the Bondies and Laffertys along the west banks of the Ecorse Creek (now River Drive) and the Drouillards in the southern section near Goddard Road.
Throughout most of the early 1800's, however, the area was largely dense forest, broken only by an occasional farm clearing.
In 1827, the entire Downriver section was incorporated by the Territorial Legislature into the Township of Ecorse, a huge tract which covered present-day Wyandotte, Ecorse, Lincoln Park, Allen Park, Melvindale, River Rouge, Southwest Detroit, Taylor Township and Southgate. [addendum: Taylor Township was later separated from Ecorse Township about 1850, and the entire township became a city in 1969.]
In the years before the Civil War, the centuries-old forest gave way faster and faster before the swinging axes of the pioneer farmers. Moving westward from the settled lands along the Detroit River were the new generations of Frenchmen. Meeting them was a growing wave of Germans, recently migrated to the United States to escape oppression in their homeland: the Keppens, Quandts, Dashers, Schonscheks and others.
The district became a thriving farmland after the Civil War; and although Ecorse was "town" for the farmers, the beginnings of a business district sprang up at Fort Street and the St. Cosme Line Road (later State Street and now Southfield). Noah LeBlanc had a store at the intersection some seventy years ago, and Herman Quandt opened a grocery market there about 1899.
Other businessmen followed suit; and by the time of World War I, "Quandt's Corners" was taking shape as a community. Henry Ford's "Five Dollar Day" was the spark needed to make the town grow.
Ford workers, looking for homes near the Rouge factory, swarmed to the area; and the end of the war saw a huge real estate boom. Sales offices sprang up on half a dozen corners, and tents and tarpaper shacks dotted the muddy streets.
Early in 1930, the Lincoln Park Improvement Association laid plans for Incorporation as a village; and in 1921, a handful of settlers met in the Strowig School and approved the plans.
Four years later, in early 1925, after several more square miles had been annexed to the village, the fast-increasing populace approved a reincorporation proposal and Lincoln Park became a city.
In 1930, federal census listed Lincoln Park as the thirty-fourth city in Michigan. The 1940 census brought her up to the twenty-sixth city, and the 1950 census boosted the city to the twentieth in size. Lincoln Park's population rose to 53,933 in the 1960 census, ranking the city fourth in Wayne County behind only Detroit, Dearborn and Livonia, and among the top twelve in Michigan.
The silver anniversary of the village's founding was celebrated in 1946, sponsored by the Junior Chamber of Commerce. A Jubilee queen, an old timers' dinner, street parade, sidewalk festivities and an all-day community picnic enlivened the town to mark the quarter-century.
The second phase of the community's growth again was well recalled when the Junior Chamber of Commerce sponsored another Silver Jubilee, this time the 25th Anniversary of Lincoln Park as a city. The organization repeated, with added activities, its venture of 1946, when it celebrated the village's founding.
In the forty years since its incorporation as a city, Lincoln Park has become a modern, attractive, residential community with good streets, fine homes and excellent schools. It is nine miles southwest of downtown Detroit and is on three master-plan superhighways: Fort Street, Southfield Road and Dix Road.
The principle reason for Lincoln Park's rapid growth is its ideal geographical location. It has no heavy industries and is free of the smoke and noise of a manufacturing area, yet is close enough to all of the great industrial plants of the Downriver section so that its residents may reach their work quickly and easily.
Lincoln Park is only three miles from the gigantic Ford Rouge plant in Dearborn, two miles from the Ecorse plant of Great Lakes Steel Corporation, three miles from the great manufacturing plants of Wyandotte and less than ten minutes drive from the hundreds of factories in West Detroit.
Lincoln Park's remarkable growth and development confirms the vision of the city's original planners, who had the foresight to provide the future expansion with an adequate sewer and water system, paved streets and a sufficient number of well-located school buildings.
Lincoln Park has, in its short forty-four years of existence, met with two extreme economic conditions - the big real estate boom of the mid 20's and the country's lowest depression of the early 30's.
During the unprecedented spiral of real estate inflation, thirty-foot lots were being sold to inexperienced investors for as high as $2000.00 with $150.00 down, the balance to be paid at $15.00 per month. Obviously, this form of investment could lead only to one conclusion - loss of investment.
In the meantime, however, the city launched into a vast improvement program, based on this inflationary assessed valuation. City officials, caught in the whirlwind of this gigantic real estate boom, exerted every possible effort to satisfy the money-hungry real estate promoters. Sidewalks were laid in outlandish subdivisions, sewerage was provided where it was absolutely unneeded, a school was built far removed from the populace and streets were paved to satisfy the real estate promoters rather than the existing dwellers.
That Lincoln Park managed to overcome this early mistake is to the everlasting credit of those who piloted the destinies of the city from turbulent waters to smooth sailing. When assessed valuations were reduced to normal, Lincoln Park was faced with a debt that seemed, at the time, insurmountable.
In the meantime, other communities faced similar circumstances, and a state enabling act was adopted to permit cities to refund their outstanding obligations if a certain percentage of their bond holders would agree to the plan. Lincoln Park was one of the first cities in Michigan to avail itself of this legal plan to dig itself out of this financial chaos. Its huge debt, amounting to nearly four million dollars in city and school obligations, was refinanced under the so-called refunding plan. This was done at a time when municipal employees were being paid in "scrip" because the city's coffers were without cash funds.
The city today owes only $115,000 on the 1945 refunding bonds. A major factor in its financial recovery was a giant boom in home building which boosted the city's assessed valuation.
In the ten years from 1946 to 1955, a total-of 70,963 permits for new homes were issued by the city's Building Department. Total construction during that same period was estimated at more than $90,000,000 by the Building Department.
Home-building reached its peak in 1949 when 2,011 permits were recorded. A gradual decline was noted in succeeding years, with 1,688 in 1960; 790 in 1951; 642 in 1953; 405 in 1954; 566 in 1955 and 200 in 1956. The 1957 totals were less than 200, while the totals for 1958 were less than 150. During 1959, 371 homes were built. The total for 1960 was 154, and 1961 was 185. In the past three years, the annual total has been less than 100.
Commercial development has kept pace with the rash of home construction. The Lincoln Park Plaza Shopping Center, on Fort Street between New York and Riverbank, opened in 1955. The Sears, Roebuck & Company Shopping Center, at Southfield and Dix, opened in 1956.
