Our town Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, is seen through cameras past and present in this largest ever photo historical review reaching as far back as 1875 to as recently as the summer of 2010. Matching vintage pictures with camera views from the same angle today, local historian and photo history veteran Jack R. Westbrook turns the same concise reporting of his five previous books again to his home town, describing what was there and what the more than 200 locations look like today. In addition to looking at people and businesses of the past and present, Westbrook turns the camera's eye on a number of historical homes and the folks who occupied them. The book is flavored by a local high schooler of the times description of life in the town in 1920, Westbrook's own 1956 high school essay on Mt. Pleasant when he was 16 years old and local interviewer and columnist Burnie Bonnel's inter views with notables of the past. This is the most comprehensive photo history of the town's growth from village to city ever published and will introduce the newcomer to Mt. Pleasant's heritage and provide hours of nostalgia to longtime residents, as well as being a welcome addition to any historian's bookshelf. A portion of the proceeds from the new book's sale will be devoted to the Veterans Memorial Library at Mt. Pleasant for the purchase of a ProScan 1000 microfilm reader system to replace the library's outmoded microfilm readers. The new machine will allow downloads, in a variety of electronic formats, of articles from newspapers past.
Since 1860, Mount Pleasant has been a center for Native American culture, lumbering, agriculture, oil and gas production, collegiate learning, and retail shopping; Mount Pleasant now boasts one of the largest gaming casino resorts in Midwest America.
Ben Weber takes the reader on a journey through his family tree from ancient Germany, through 19th century travel to the United States, and thus to Ohio and Michigan, all by water, to his grandfather's settling in Nottawa Township, Isabella County, Michigan. Weber also relates the story of his personal quest for his family history.
Michigan is commonly recognized as a manufacturing center and for its splendid tourist attractions. Lesser known is Michigans role as a leader in the production of oil and gas. Since the discovery of commercial quantities of oil in Saginaw in 1925, Michigan has grown to become the 12th-largest natural gas and 17th-largest crude oil producer of the 34 states producing oil and gas. Michigans petroleum heritage spans 64 of the states 68 Lower Peninsula counties and has played a role in shielding communities from the financial devastation of the Great Depression, funding acquisition of hundreds of public recreation projects through the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund, and rising to meet environmental challenges through improving technologies. Michigan Oil and Gas documents that heritage with photographs from the Clarke Historical Library Norman X. Lyon and Michigan Oil & Gas News Collections.
Once an ancient revered hunting and gathering site for Chippewa Indians, Isabella County today is home to one of the nation's largest Native American tribal-owned casino/resort complexes. Incorporated in 1859, during the turbulent times just ahead of the Civil War and birth year of the United States oil industry, the area became a modern-day commerce center. A rough-and-tumble timbering center saw Michigan's first lumber millionaire plat a town, and hardworking immigrants carved farms, villages, and towns from the timbered-out wilderness near the center of the Michigan Lower Peninsula. From harvesting lumber above the ground to harvesting petroleum below the ground, the area ushers in an oil boom just in time to be saved from the financial tribulations of the Great Depression. Today, thousands of young people flock to the area each year to attend Michigan's fourth-largest university, Central Michigan University. This is the saga of Isabella County, told as the county celebrates 150 years of economic and cultural diversity.
From a humble 1892 beginning upstairs over a downtown store in the village of Mount Pleasant to the fourth-largest university in the state, Central Michigan Universitys growth is tribute to the determination of visionaries who saw the Lower Michigan crossroads town as a potential home to a world-class learning center. First a private enterprise, then a state school, Central Michigan Normal School and Business College, the school would change names four more times to be known as Central State Teachers College, Central Michigan College of Education, Central Michigan College, and Central Michigan University on the road to making its founders 19th-century dreams a 21st-century reality. With a total enrollment of 27,452, Central Michigan University offers a broad selection of more than 3,000 courses and 25 degrees.
Since 1860, Mount Pleasant has been a center for Native American culture, lumbering, agriculture, oil and gas production, collegiate learning, and retail shopping; Mount Pleasant now boasts one of the largest gaming casino resorts in Midwest America.
Before Lee Harvey Oswald became linked to the JFK assassination, he was a mediocre U.S. Marine assigned to a radar squadron in Atsugi, Japan. Swike, a former Marine Corps Intelligence Officer stationed in Japan, spent over two decades researching Oswald's activities overseas, unraveling a chapter of Oswald's life that had quite simply been overlooked.
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