Michigan's foremost lumbertowns, flourishing urban industrial centers in the late 19th century, faced economic calamity with the depletion of timber supplies by the end of the century. Turning to their own resources and reflecting individual cultural identities, Saginaw, Bay City, and Muskegon developed dissimilar strategies to sustain their urban industrial status. This study is a comprehensive history of these lumbertowns from their inception as frontier settlements to their emergence as reshaped industrial centers.

Primarily an examination of the role of the entrepreneur in urban...

On January 17, 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment took effect in the United States, prohibiting the manufacture, sale, use, or importation of alcoholic beverages except for scientific and medicinal purposes. Church and business leaders, temperance advocates, and state and
national officials predicted that a tranquil new era was about to begin-an era when prisons would be empty, police forces could be drastically cut, and workers would be more productive, spending time with their families rather than in saloons.

As Rumrunning and the Roaring Twenties illustrates, peace and tranquillity and...

In the turbulent era from 1890 to the late 1930s, Detroit emerged as a leading industrial and urban center and endured the crushing social and economic challenges of the Great Depression. It was during these years that Tracy W. McGregor, with the assistance of his wife, Katherine Whitney McGregor, established himself as a philanthropist and community leader. Though public buildings and a charitable foundation bear their names, relatively little is known about the private-minded McGregors, who avoided newspaper interviews or public exposure whenever possible.

In Tracy W. McGregor, Philip...