On January 26, 1837, Michigan became the 26th state to join the United States of America. It was admitted as a free state by Andrew Jackson, who also oversaw the addition of the slave state of Arkansas the year prior. While lower Michigan and the eastern portion of the Upper Peninsula had been a territory since 1805, when determining state lines the area west of Munising was included as part of a deal to relinquish a strip of land in the south to Ohio.

Deriving from the Chipewa name Michigama, or large lake, Michigan was originally settled around 10,000 BCE by Paleo-Indians, and at the time of the first Europeans there was an existing population of about 15,000. The first metalworking in North America was in the Upper Peninsula, with evidence of copper mining around 5000 B.C.E. While copper mining began again in the 1800s, the original settlers saw Michigan as a valuable location for controlling the fur trade, due in part to its extensive freshwater shoreline – the most of any state and equivalent to the Atlantic coast from Maine to Florida.

The first European settlement in Michigan was Sault Ste. Marie, founded in 1668 as a Jesuit mission. The first in lower Michigan was founded by Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac in 1701. Called Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit it is now the location of the city of Detroit, the state capital until 1847 when it was moved to Lansing. After the French and Indian War in the 1760s the area that became Michigan came under the control of Great Britain until after the Revolutionary War, when it became part of the Northwest Territory along with Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin.

The non-native population of about 9000 in 1820 grew to over 30,000 a decade later, due in large part to the construction of the Erie canal in 1825, which connected the Hudson River in eastern NY to the great lakes, and the 1819 Treaty of Saginaw, which required Native American tribes, primarily the Chippewa, Ottawa and Potawatomi to sign over 6 million acres in central Michigan to the United States government. By 1840, shortly after statehood, the population grew to over 200,000 with many of the new residents from New England and New York who migrated west looking for inexpensive and fertile farmland.

The story of Michigan from its prehistoric indigenous roots to its eventual statehood is a story of the influences that shaped our state. Though much has changed since acquiring statehood nearly 200 years ago, we remain a community that values our waters, land, and ancient history.