Port Huron High School - Student Yearbook (Port Huron, MI)

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SUPERINTENDENT H. A. DAVIS

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History of Port Huron The history of Port Huron proper may be said to begin in 183 7 because in that year the settlement near the mouth of Black River was first called by that name. Two years before Edward Petit had laid out a plat on the South side of Black River, near the mouth which he called the Village of Peru. D. B. Harrington laid out the land between Peru and the Indian Reserve in the Village of Desmond. John Thorn laid out what is now called Thorn ' s Plat and called it Gratiot, and Charles Butler laid out Butler Plat and called it Huron, and in 183 7 these were all united and called Port Huron. For some years before that people had been coming in slowly and settling around the vicinity principally along Black River. In 183 2 the Military Road from Detroit to Fort Gratiot was completed and a bridge built across Black River. Oddly enough the bridge was of the same general type as the present one, except that each leaf or part was raised by a separate winch, requiring two men to operate it. At that time the Indian Reserve was still in existence, the east line starting at Black River a short distance east of the bridge and running southwesterly through the present St. Clair County Savings Bank, J. A. Davidson Co. store, crossing Griswold Street a little east ot Sixteenth Street. John Riley, a half breed Indian, well known for his services as interpreter and his influe nce with the Indians, lived for sev- eral years in a log house just inside the Reserve near the corner of Military and Water Streets. People began to come in rapidly in 1837, a newspaper called the Lake Huron Observer was started, with E. B. Harrington, a brother of D. B. Harrington, as editor. During the summer of that year they claimed for the town 500 population. There were three hotels, eleven merchants, three lawyers, two ministers, two custom house officers, twelve buildings were in course of construction at one time. On Black River there were ten water saw mills with three more building, and two steam saw mills, one the Black River Steam Mill, located on the north side of Black River just west of Erie Street had the enormous capacity of cutting 25,000 feet a day. There was even then rivalry between the settlement on Black River and the Villag e of Palmer, now St. Clair, which was the County Seat, and the Observer claimed with pride that 45 people had moved to Port Huron from Palmer. The main industry at that time and for 40 years after was the con- verting of pine logs, brought down Black River, into lumber, lath and shingles, and at one time there were as many as eight saw mills in Port Huron, and according to the census of 183 7 there were 30 such mills in the county. The panic. of 183 7 and subsequent business depression nearly stopped the influx of population and although the settlement was incorporated as a