Top 10 Facts about Detroit


 

Detroit is the largest and most populous city in Michigan, situated on the Detroit River in southeastern Michigan. The Canadian city of Windsor, Ontario, is on the other side of the river, to the south of Detroit. The city’s name comes from the French word ‘détroit’ meaning “strait” as the city was situated on a narrow passage of water linking two rivers.

The city of Detroit is known for its contributions to music and as a repository for art, architecture and design, along with its historical automotive background. Below are the top 10 facts about Detroit;

1. Detroit’s Belle Isle Park is the largest urban island park in the country

Belle Isle Park – Flickr

Belle Isle Park is a 982-acre island park that consists of Belle Isle, an island in the Detroit River, as well as several surrounding islets with historic, environmental, and cultural resources that have been beloved for generations. The park is home to the Belle Isle Aquarium, Anna Scripps Whitcomb Conservatory, Dossin Great Lakes Museum, Belle Isle Nature Center, the James Scott Memorial Fountain, and more.

It is the largest city-owned island park in the United States, and Belle Isle is the third-largest island in the Detroit River. The park was designed by Frederick Olmstead, the architect of Central Park in New York City.

2. Detroit “Motor City,” Michigan

Henry Ford, 1919 – Wikipedia

Detroit is nicknamed “Motor City” because it is considered to be the historic heart of the American automotive industry. In 1903, Henry Ford founded the Ford Motor Company. Ford’s manufacturing and those of automotive pioneers William C. Durant, the Dodge Brothers, Packard, and Walter Chrysler established Detroit’s status in the early 20th century as the world’s automotive capital.

Of the 125 auto companies that sprang up in Detroit in the early twentieth century, Ford quickly rose to the top. Ford devised the modern assembly line. In 1908, the fledgling company introduced the Model T, a car whose standardized production would revolutionize the industry. Six years later, with hopes of building a stable, loyal workforce, Ford announced the five-dollar day, leading to a dramatic increase in pay for industrial workers.

3. Detroit River isn’t actually a river

Detroit River – Wikipedia

The Detroit River flows west and south for 24 nautical miles from Lake St. Clair to Lake Erie as a strait in the Great Lakes system. A strait is a landform connecting two seas or two other large areas of water. The Detroit River is designated both an American Heritage River and a Canadian Heritage River—the only river to have this dual designation.

The river was originally named by the French as Rivière Détroit. Détroit is French for “strait”. The river was known literally as the “River of the Strait”. When the English gained control of the region, they changed the pronunciation, and continued calling the flowing waterway a river.

4. Detroit’s Vernor’s Ginger Ale

Vernor’s Ginger Ale – Flickr

Vernors is an American brand of ginger ale, first produced commercially in 1880 by James Vernor, a Detroit pharmacist. It is the oldest surviving ginger ale sold in the United States, although there were a number of brands of ginger ale and ginger beer sold prior to 1880.

The brand was originally sold as Vernor’s; the apostrophe was dropped in 1959. In 1962, Vernors introduced Vernors 1-Calorie, now called Diet Vernors.

Vernors is a sweet “golden” ginger ale that derives its color from caramel, and has a robust, vanilla-heavy flavor. The Vernors style was common before Prohibition, during which “dry” pale, less sweet ginger ale, typified by Canada Dry Ginger Ale, became popular as a drink mixer.

5. Prohibition in Detroit

Prohibition era – Flickr

The Prohibition era in the United States was a nationwide constitutional ban on the production, importation, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages from 1920 to 1933. The Prohibitionists aimed to heal what they saw as an ill society beset by alcohol-related problems such as alcoholism, family violence and saloon-based political corruption.

By the time Prohibition took effect nationally, the residents of Michigan and Ontario were well versed in bootlegging, and they nearly perfected their trade during the next 13 years. Seventy-five percent of all the alcohol smuggled into the United States during Prohibition crossed the border at the Windsor-Detroit Funnel. By 1929, rum-running was Detroit’s second-largest industry, netting $215 million per year.

6. Salt mines underneath Detroit

Underground salt mine – Wikipedia

The gigantic salt mine in Detroit is located 1,200 feet beneath Detroit’s surface, spreads out more than 1,500 acres and has over 100 miles of underground roads. The existence of rock salt in the Detroit area was discovered in 1895. Today the mines provide North America with a full line of ice melter products ranging from bulk rock salt to bagged rock salt and premium blended formulations.

Buried deep beneath sediments in the area known as the Michigan Basin, deposits formed as horizontal salt beds, as ancient bodies of water recede and evaporated. The basin was an arid area of Michigan’s lower peninsula separated from the ocean by a natural bar of land. As the basin continued to sink lower into the earth, salt-laden ocean water repeatedly poured into the depression, where it gradually evaporated, creating miles of salt beds.

7. Detroit, Michigan, is not alone

Welcome to Detroit Lakes Sign – Flickr

There are other “Detroits” in America, including, Detroit, Alabama, Detroit, Illinois, Detroit, Kansas, Detroit, Maine, Detroit, Oregon, Detroit, Texas, Detroit Beach, Michigan, Detroit Harbor, Wisconsin, Detroit Lakes, Minnesota and Detroit Township, Minnesota.

The largest in population of “the other Detroits” is Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, which has nearly 10,000 people. The smallest in population is North Detroit Township, South Dakota, with around 69 people.

8. Detroit and the Olympic summer games

Olympic Rings – Flickr

Detroit has tried, and failed, to house the Olympic summer games nine times, which is the most by any city in the world never to host the event. The city made a bid to host every Summer Games from 1940 to 1972. The closest Detroit ever came was its 1963 proposal for the 1968 games, when it finished second to Mexico City. Now the Motor City has been snubbed yet again, as the next Summer Games to be held in the U.S. will be in Los Angeles in 2028.

Detroit has played an honorable role in the development of the U.S. Olympic movement. The idea to host the Games was due to George Graves, treasurer of the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC), who assembled a committee of interested Detroiters in 1936. But the man who took the idea on and ran with it for over three decades was Fred Matthaei, a self-made businessman who devoted a large part of his life to amateur sport.

9. Detroit Windsor Tunnel

Windsor Tunnel – Flickr

The Detroit–Windsor tunnel, also known as the Detroit–Canada tunnel, is an international highway tunnel connecting the cities of Detroit, Michigan, United States and Windsor, Ontario, Canada. It was built by the firm Parsons, Klapp, Brinckerhoff and Douglas and completed in 1930.

It is the second-busiest crossing between the United States and Canada, it was the third underwater vehicular tunnel constructed in the United States and the first international vehicle tunnel. The Michigan Central Railway Tunnel, also under the Detroit River, was the second tunnel between two nations. The St. Clair Tunnel, between Port Huron, Michigan, and Sarnia, Ontario, under the St. Clair River, was the first.

10. Detroit is the birthplace of techno music

Detroit Electronic Music Festival, 2002 – Wikipedia

Detroit techno music combines the cool, detached dancefloor beats and textures of European electronic music with the soul and celebration of American funk music. The city’s techno originators often imbued their music with Afro-futurist and science fiction ideals.

The three individuals most closely associated with the birth of Detroit techno as a genre are Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson and Derrick May, also known as the “Belleville Three”. The three, who were high school friends from Belleville, Michigan, created electronic music tracks in their basemen