Small Towns around Detroit

[jgavrile]

Bearinabox. I was making light of the fact that pheasants have all but disappeared.

[Hermod]

In the late 1960's taking Grand River from Farmington Township to Brighton entailed going through three traffic lights. From Halsted which was a stop street at Grand River the first light was at Novi Road. Then the crossroads at New Hudson, then Old US 23, about 20 miles. Today, three lights not counting Halsted and you are at Haggerty.

In the fall of '69 I went to a party with the girl I was dating. She went to Cooley, I went to Farmington. One of her friends came up to me and said "So you live WAY out in Farmngton?"

Brighton was home of the Detroit Boy Scout Council's camp, the Charles Howell Scout Reservation and we thought it was really way out in the woods. My brother and I did a two week summer camp there in 1952. The middle weekend was 4th of July and the scouts had a contingent in the Brighton 4th of July parade.

In 1961, my cousin was being married in East lansing and i drove out to the wedding. When i drove through Brighton, I remember a little diner called the "Squat & Gobble" and i wonder if it still exists.

[DetroitDad]

I love this thread. Thank You!

The loss of our core city center pails in comparison to the loss of the countless small towns across Michigan. What really bothers me the most though is that we really did pave over paradise here. Suburbia has taken our countryside. While many get depressed over seeing their childhoods homes and places in Detroit fall to blight, crime and demolition, many of us got to see the fields, woods, and streams get paved over for parking lots, McDonalds, and McSubdivisions.

Suburbia was supposed to be a an urban life in a country setting. What we have ended up with in Southwest Michigan is neither country nor city, just suburban blight, and few if any affordable places to raise our young.

[EastsideAl]

Bearinabox. I was making light of the fact that pheasants have all but disappeared.

You need to come to the city more often. I see plenty of them around the east side of Detroit. Maybe that's where they all went.

[jcole]

I love this thread. Thank You!



The loss of our core city center pails in comparison to the loss of the countless small towns across Michigan. ...

Michigan is loaded with small towns. Ask me, I live in one, and it's not that far from the city. Within one hour as a matter of fact and there are plenty more up here that still have farmers and tractor stores and not much else.

[EastsideAl]

Was it on Gratiot? There's still an old farmhouse a couple or few blocks south of 8 mile on the east side of Gratiot, next to a Taco Bell I think. At least it was still there some months ago.

I love that house and wish it could be saved. My great-grand-uncle's place was further north, on the other side of 8 Mile. An amusement park was built nearby in the 1920s - Eastwood Park [[which was opened by the folks who once ran the recently-evicted Electric Park near Belle Isle - just out of the reach of Detroit and Wayne County law enforcement) . My dad and his school friends used to take the streetcar out to the end of the line to go there.

My great-grandfather worked on the interurban cars, and used to stay out there when he needed to pick up his shift up in Macomb County. He was, ironically, killed by an interurban car when his automobile was smashed near 9 Mile Rd. by one he was trying to beat because he was running late for his shift.

[Bearinabox]

You need to come to the city more often. I see plenty of them around the east side of Detroit. Maybe that's where they all went.

Right, I guess this is why I was confused. I wasn't aware that they were particularly uncommon.

[DetroitDad]

Michigan is loaded with small towns. Ask me, I live in one, and it's not that far from the city. Within one hour as a matter of fact and there are plenty more up here that still have farmers and tractor stores and not much else.

I know there are some treasures out there. Bay City is beautiful, and my wife has taken me to the middle of the mitten before. Those are my dream towns.

Right now I'm young, and need to be in ground zero.

[terryh]

When I still resided in Lapeer County years ago and the engine blew on my car on Van Dyke, guy in a pickup swooped me up just as I pulled onto a side road..he didnt think twice about stopping, and I didn't think twice about hopping in the truck...folks were more trusting...didnt have to stand on the porch when you visisted, or went to pick someone up...after the bar, wasnt unheard of to party at or crash at strangers or mild aquaintainces...all thats changing with self centered inpersonal rude city slick-suburbanites moving to Lapeer County...I remember driving down Ryder Rd. In Imlay to check out a farm house my family stayed in, I was dissapointed to see all the development....stopped to talk to this guy that turned out to be a developer...could tell right away he was from the suburbs...very cold and impersonal.looked at me like he was surprised a stranger would have the nerve to talk to him..

[Bearinabox]

Bearinabox. I was making light of the fact that pheasants have all but disappeared.

http://www.sweetjuniperinspiration.c...pheasants.html

[Patrick]

I still think everyone's favorite "small town" in SE Michigan is still Romeo. It hasn't lost that charm....yet.

[terryh]

Also it kind of irks me when visitors community leaders and residents of Ferndale describe the city as "friendly like a small town" having for the most part grown up in rural and semi-rural communities I could offer many examples of why Ferndale is no where near small town friendly open and trusting, although the city, to me, seems to be overall more hospitable,friendly and open compared to surrounding cities..

[Hermod]

Station stops on the Michigan Central [[1910)

Detroit MP 0.0
Woodward Ave MP 5.7
Milwaukee Jn MP 6.7
North Detroit MP 10.3 [[between 7 and 8 mile)
Warren MP 17.0
Utica MP 23.8
Rochester MP 30.9
Orion MP 40.3
Oxford MP 43.6
Thomas MP 47.5
Metamora MP 52.00
Hunter's Creek MP 55.3
Lapeer MP 60.0
and then more stops all the way to Mackinaw City

This line still had passenger service as afar north as Saginaw up into the mid-60s.

[txlady]

I certainly don't remember this, but my HS girlfriend's mother grew up in Van Dyke, a seperate city. My step-mom grew up there too. I'm not sure where it was, but it must have been further out than 8 Mile but certainly below 10 Mile.

[maryhelen]

How many are you are old enough to remember when the small towns, villages were distinct and seperate from other towns, villages but now are just a part of metro Detroit in that there seem to be no borders that divide them? Are am sure as you go out from Detroit the small towns are distinct, but how distinct are they anymore? I remember my uncle had a small farm up between Richmond and Armada back in the sixties and it seemed a million miles from Detroit. Also had a uncle that had a small farm on 25 mile and it seemed a long way from Detroit, but now is just subdivisions. It does make me sad to see this loss.

I remember there was the Village of Warren, Utica [[though the main street wasn't on Van Dyke), Washington, Romeo, Almont, Imlay City, Marlette, Bad Axe. Then, we didn't see the towns anymore and I realized they were no longer distinct towns.

[jcole]

I remember there was the Village of Warren, Utica [[though the main street wasn't on Van Dyke), Washington, Romeo, Almont, Imlay City, Marlette, Bad Axe. Then, we didn't see the towns anymore and I realized they were no longer distinct towns.

Washington has never been a town, it's a township. Romeo, Almont, Imlay City, Marlette, Bad Axe are all still very distinct towns. Look at a map.

[maryhelen]

It's all a process. My great-grandfather's brother had a farm near Gratiot and Eight Mile not far from the village of "Halfway" [[which became East Detroit... er.. Eastpointe). When my grandmother was a teenager her family moved "way out" onto Eastlawn between Vernor and Charlevoix, where they could smell the livestock on nearby farms and see the interurban cars running on Jefferson from their porch.

When my father was young his uncle owned a farm "way out in Southfield Township" off of 12 Mile Rd. where he spent time working as a boy. My mother spent the early years of her childhood on her parents' farm on Belleville Rd. A trip to Royal Oak was a trip to the country.

When I was a teenager there were still cornfields in Troy not far from the brand new Somerset Mall [["who would go to shop way out there?" mused my mother), Rochester and Utica and Plymouth still looked a lot like the small country towns they had been, and the houses around Oakland County lakes were still mostly just summer cottages.

Now the frontier, and the small towns, are further out. And it is the City of Detroit that's looking a lot more like the countryside.

I grew up on Eastburn just 4 blocks south of 8 Mile and Gratiot and we moved there in 1940 and I have never heard of Halfway. It was East Detroit when we lived there. We went to the Eastwood Theatre & Eastwood Park, Sometimes, we went to the East Detroit Theater. There were still lots of fields. We watched the fire works from Eastwood Park every Memorial Day, 4th of July and Labor Day from my second-floor bedroom window. At the time, I thought every kid in the world watched fire works from their bedroom window. When we were a little older, we rode bicycles to a bicycle store between 8 & 9 Mile and Gratiot and rented a two-seater bike which we enjoyed riding around the neighborhood.

[kryptonite]

Remember when people used to go 'up north' to places like Union Lake, Harsens Island, Pinkney? They actually had summer cottages in many of those places that are now outer-ring suburbs of the city.

[Detroitnerd]

Salem is in western Wayne County but feels much more distant. Out there, Six Mile Road turns briefly into a rutted and corduroyed dirt road.

[jcole]

I certainly don't remember this, but my HS girlfriend's mother grew up in Van Dyke, a seperate city. My step-mom grew up there too. I'm not sure where it was, but it must have been further out than 8 Mile but certainly below 10 Mile.

From "Michigan Place Names" by Walter Romig:
Attachment 6022
From a Google map, this looks like the area:
Attachment 6023

[Novine]

Salem is actually in Washtenaw County. You can still get a feel for the farming roots of Wayne County in Sumpter and Huron Townships.

http://www.waynecounty.com/mygovt/do...ps/basemap.pdf

[Gingellgirl]

Andersonville, Auburn Heights, Austin Corners, Big Beaver, Brandon Gardens, Bunny Run, Campbells Corner, Charing Cross, Clarenceville, Clintonville, Clyde, Drayton Plains, East Highland, Farmington Acres, Five Points, Four Towns, Glengary, Groveland Corners, Hickory Ridge, Jossman Acres, Lake Orion Heights, Newark, North Farmington, Oak Grove, Oakley Park, Oakwood, Oxbow, Perry Lake Heights, Quakertown, Rose Corners, Rudds Mill, Seven Harbors, Stony Creek, Thomas, Troy Corners,Walters, West Highland, Westacres, Wood Creek Farms, Yates . . . those places are gone . . . absorbed into the surrounding cities and townships. BUT GINGELLVILLE IS STILL HERE!

[jcole]

I grew up on Eastburn just 4 blocks south of 8 Mile and Gratiot and we moved there in 1940 and I have never heard of Halfway. It was East Detroit when we lived there. We went to the Eastwood Theatre & Eastwood Park, Sometimes, we went to the East Detroit Theater. There were still lots of fields. We watched the fire works from Eastwood Park every Memorial Day, 4th of July and Labor Day from my second-floor bedroom window. At the time, I thought every kid in the world watched fire works from their bedroom window. When we were a little older, we rode bicycles to a bicycle store between 8 & 9 Mile and Gratiot and rented a two-seater bike which we enjoyed riding around the neighborhood.

From Michigan Place Names by Romig:
Attachment 6024

[Detroitnerd]

It is amazing that the house still stands! I would love to see a time lapse video of it from the time it was constructed to today.

http://ecoscraps.com/2009/01/07/a-sh...-robert-crumb/

[MikeM]

What's the deal with Base Line?

Attachment 6038