Welcome to Bay County Michigan
Bay County was organized on February 17, 1857 from parts of Saginaw
and Midland Counties. The citizens of the bayside
communities tired of traveling three days to Saginaw for court cases
and in 1854 voted to separate from Saginaw County.
The county encompasses the mouth of the Saginaw Bay Watershed, the
outlet to Lake Huron of the Saginaw, Kawkawlin, Chippewa, Coldwater,
Tittabawasse, Shiawassee, Cass and Flint rivers. The land is a
fertile plain, part of the inland lake bed of the glacial Lake
Algonquin. Tobico Marsh, a National Landmark 1976, is
part of the largest contiguous freshwater coastal wetland in the
United States.
Bay City was once the camping ground of the Sauk, Ojibway, Ottawa
and Potawatomi Indians. Ojibway or Chippewa Indians greeted
the French Voyageurs who came to trade for furs in the late 18th and
early 19th centuries. The artifacts of the settlements have been
unearthed along the Saginaw River causeway.
The natural geographical configuration led to the economic base for
the county which included lumber, coal, salt, sugar beets, potatoes,
soy beans, wheat and oats, chemical manufacturing, knitting mills,
automotive manufacturing and boat building. The lumber
industry started in Bay County in 1844 when a mill was constructed
at the mouth of the Kawkawlin River. Millions of board feet of
lumber from Michigan's pine and hardwood forests would pass through
the mills of Bay County in the ensuing years. The county
was aptly named the "Lumber Capitol of the World".
The salt mines were tapped as early as 1850. The Michigan Mine
in Monitor Township began mining coal in 1897. The Monitor
Coal Company was the last coal mine in the county to close in 1947.
Producing the coal proved to costly. Oil production in
Bay County in the Kawkawlin pool ranks fourth in the State of
Michigan.
Sugar beet farming and the sugar industry have also played a part in the
economic development of the county. Sugar beets and chicory
were introduced around 1892.
Shipyards in Bay County produced Great Lakes steel freighters and
other water craft. During WWII the shipyards helped
produce U.S. Destroyers and missile vessels for the war effort.
Today the county produces hydroplanes, sailboats, catamarans and
iceboats.
In successive waves Bay County was settled by numerous ethnic
groups. The French came from Canada and Southern Michigan and
settled in Banks and Dolsenville. German immigrants settled
Frankenlust and Monitor Townships in the early 1850's. In the
1870's through the early 1900's Polish and Jewish immigrants settled
the area between Madison and Hampton streets off Columbus Avenue.
The Irish settled both sides of the river after the Potato Famine.
Other immigrants came from Sweden, Holland, the Austro-Hungarian
Empire and Italy. Numerous immigrant migrant workers from
Mexico and Haiti settled permanently in the county.
All in all a rich heritage, a fertile land and
water.........................!
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