ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL BEGINNINGS

OF MICHIGAN

CHAPTER I

PHYSICAL CONDITIONS

THE close relation between history and geography can hardly be better stated than in the words of a well-known writer, that "all historical problems ought to be studied geographically and all geographic problems must be studied historically." In an account of the settlement of Michigan, therefore, some attention must be given to those geographic and geologic forces by which the process has been partially conditioned.

In geographic location, the most important single geographic condition, 2 Michigan is specially favored. On the south the lower peninsula reaches to latitude 41°69', on the east to longitude 82°40'; it is therefore a little southeast of the geographic center of the continent and within range of glaciation; to this is due 1. Semple, Influences of Geographic Environment, 11. Ibid., 129.

2.

3. Walling, Atlas of Michigan (Detroit, 1873), cited infra as Tackabury's Atlas. The latitude of Detroit is about the same as that of Albany and Boston.

very largely its topography, drainage and soil. Its latitude favors a climate somewhat like that of New .York and New England, but so modified by the Great Lakes as to present some striking differences. Position, moreover, has been a factor in determining the fauna and flora. The population and institutions of Michigan would have been other than they are had the land been differently situated. Midway on the northern boundary of the United States, Michigan was easily reached from Canada, New York and New England, and on the south from Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee. The tendency of population in the United States to move westward along parallels of latitude, early strengthened in this region by Lake Erie and later by the Erie Canal, conspired to transplant to Michigan the traditions, institutions and ideals of New York and New England. Michigan's situation within the arms of great fresh-water seas aided settlement by facilitating transportation and laying the foundations of the fishing industry, of ship building and of lake commerce.

The effect of Michigan's position upon its climate is modified by the Great Lakes through the agency of the prevailing westerly winds, which equalize the temperature and provide an amount of rain and snow that help to give variety to the fauna and flora, to lengthen the growing period for vegetation, and to protect the tenderer flora from the extremes of heat and cold. The resulting healthfulness, with respect to those diseases 4. An interesting result in institutional life is the Michigan town-meeting, which has the powers of the New England town-meeting, but the organization of the New York county board.

which accompany extremes of temperature, has been of much consequence to settlement. It was pointed out by Alexander Winchell that these characteristics of southern Michigan climate were the distinctive features of superiority possessed by Michigan in comparison with her neighbors."

The relation of Lake Michigan and the westerly winds to this climate is easily understood. The lake contains about 3,400 cubic miles of water, extending along the entire western side of the lower peninsula, with an average width of about sixty miles and a maximum depth of about a thousand feet. This great volume of water becomes a water becomes a reservoir of heat comparatively constant in amount, since the water, not being as good a conductor of heat as the land, acquires its warmth slowly and slowly gives it forth. The air over the peninsula is made comparatively uniform in temperature through the medium of evaporation into the westerly winds which blow over the lake in all seasons modifying their temperature from its waters.

6

How great is this influence may be seen from a comparative statement. Milwaukee and Grand Haven have approximately the same latitude: on November 18, 1880, when the temperature was 5 degrees Fahr.

5. Tenth Annual Report of the State Horticultural Soc. of Michigan (1880), 155.

6.

The modifying effect of the Great Lakes is discussed by C. F. Schneider in a report on Surface Geology and Agricultural Conditions of the Southern Peninsula of Michigan made by Frank Leverett, Mich. Geol. and Biol. Survey, Publication 9, Geological Series 7 (1912), 28-32. Two plates (pp. 30, 31) show January and July mean temperatures from 1886 to 1911.

8

above freezing at Milwaukee it was 18 degrees at Grand Haven on the Michigan shore. It was found that extreme cold at Grand Haven for a series of winters was fourteen degrees less than at Milwaukee. In the number of days of growing weather, a factor very significant for the tenderer vegetation, Grand Haven has been found to gain over Milwaukee thirteen days in spring and five in autumn, a condition that is chiefly responsible for the Michigan fruit belt. The entire western shore of the peninsula shares in varying degree this comparative mildness of temperature and freedom from early frosts for a distance of from five to ten miles inland. On May 16, 1868, a frost which was destructive in Illinois, Indiana and Ohio did no damage in the Michigan fruit belt as far north as Grand Traverse Bay.10 Extreme winter weather on the southern shore of the lake at New Buffalo, Berrien County, averages about twelve degrees higher than a 7. Mich. Horticultural Soc. Rep. (1880), 158.

8. Ibid., 163.

9. Ibid., 161. See Leverett, op. cit., 39-41, for plates giving the average date of the last killing-frost in spring and the first killing-frost in autumn for a series of years, also the average length of the crop-growing season. The Detroit Gazette, March 27, 1818, comments on the very cold summer of 1816 and resultant destruction of crops; killing-frosts are said to have occurred every month during the summer. Mich. Hist. Colls., XXVIII, 358. The relation of the climate and soil of the western shore to fruit growing is well considered in the History of Berrien and Van Buren Counties, 118-126, with references.

10. Mich. Horticultural Soc. Rep., (1880), 160. The Detroit Free Press, in an editorial of May 6, 1836, directed the attention of immigrants to the northern part of the State, affirming that the climate was not colder at Mackinac than in New York.