"Some of the blamed things have grown until they are as long as your arm, and they wallow about on the bottom like a lot of hogs until the water is ruined in appearance."
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From sturgeon to shad, pike to pickerel, carp and people who carped about carp, the fish tells us a lot about the way we live in Detroit. Today: the magnificent whitefish.
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Celebrating General Friend Palmer's birthday with "whiskey in the gentlemen's dressing room, and champagne in the supper room."
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Why are we called "Wolverines"? You've heard the stories about the Toledo War and greedy land-grabbing settlers. Here's one more idea, from an old tavern in Dearborn.
Read more →The story of an escaped slave living and working in Detroit.
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Part 2: From Germany, to Milwaukee, to Atlanta, to Detroit: the cyclorama of the Battle of Atlanta.
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Starting around 1850, Detroiters could pop into Old City Hall or the Firemen's Hall and, for 25 cents or so, see the latest "greatest painting ever made" — sweeping views of overland route to California, the funeral of Napoleon, Bible scenes, the life of George Washington.
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The Detroit Boat Club, founded in 1839, is the oldest in the country. Its home on Belle Isle is crumbling, compelling, and calls home centuries of water sport.
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The historic Belle Isle Aquarium, closed since 2005, opens for one day only during Shiver on the River.
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Henry Ford and Thomas Edison had neighboring seaside summer homes (and a research lab) in Florida. We visited.
Read more →''Blake ... stood in mortal fear of death and from the cholera in particular. He went to Milwaukee to escape the latter, but unfortunately he did not.''
Read more →Milwaukee's Captain Frederick Pabst, in his sea-captain days, crossed paths with another captain — Detroit shipping king and mega-millionaire industrialist Eber Brock Ward.
Read more →How a lifelong Detroiter founded Canada's most famous whiskey.
Read more →Michigan was an early adopter of the Thanksgiving tradition.
Read more →I miss history field trips. After spending most of the summer cooped up to write a book (and most of the fall re-assembling my life), I have been eager to start making excursions again — to cemeteries, parks, historic markers, battlefields, the woods. But it seems my time has started to free up just as...
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