Grosse Ile Township today is made up of a dozen islands in the Detroit River. The largest island was given the name Grosse Ile by early French explorers
who found it being used by the Native American tribes as a fishing and hunting ground. In 1776, Detroit merchants William and Alexander Macomb purchased Grosse Ile from the Potawatomi Indians and, to help establish their ownership rights, built a home and a gristmill and secured tenant farmers to till the land. Later acreage was sold off and settlement began in earnest, although it remained
largely an agricultural community. The...

In 1927, the US Navy floated a small tin hanger down the Detroit
River, planting it on a grass airfield at the southern tip of Grosse Ile,
Michigan. This established one of the nation's largest and most important
bases for training young officers in the art of flight. Nestled among farms
and lavish estates, Naval Air Station Grosse Ile (NAS GI) was home to
thousands of Navy officers earning their wings before leaving to fight
in World War II . Here their story is told through photographs taken
by the airmen who flew and lived there, from its beginnings in 1927 to...