Download Free Our Little Island Grosse Ile Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Our Little Island Grosse Ile and write the review.

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 railroad came to Grosse Ile in the 1880s and attracted both visitors and new residents. Hotels sprang up to accommodate summer visitors who were drawn to Grosse Ile by its healthful climate, natural beauty, and opportunities for outdoor recreation. Today Grosse Ile is home to more than 11,000 residents who have come here to enjoy many of those same unique qualities--all in close proximity to a large metropolitan area.
"The story of the tiny island, located fifty kilometers downstream from the port of Quebec, which served as a quarantine station for more than four million people en route to Canada between 1832 and 1937."
Explores ghosts and haunted places, local legends, cursed roads, crazy characters, and unusual roadside attractions found in Michigan.
Growing up on Grosse Ile is the story of life on a border island between Michigan and Canada, downriver from Detroit. What was it like to be young in a place surrounded by water and Great Lakes freighters in mid-twentieth century America? We grew up outside, and the island shaped our youth: both its unique provincial qualities-we all missed the same word on the fourth grade spelling bee-and its ties to the mainland-with the many "bridge stories" like the early bridge built to allow horses from the island to pull beer wagons in Detroit. With our ups and downs, we learned the lesson of the fragility of island life, and finally the hardest lesson of all-that those who grow up on the island must leave it.
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 its decommissioning more than 40 years later. This is the story of men such as Pres. George H.W. Bush, who flew torpedo bombers from NAS GI. And this is the story of the ZMC-2, the Navy's only all-metal blimp, constructed at NAS GI. Finally, this is also the story of the current NAS GI. Spared the fate of many decommissioned bases, today Cessnas, Pipers, and Mooneys rest in the same hangars where Corsairs and Phantoms once prowled. Private pilots take flight and land via NAS GI's unmistakable triangle of runways, and students still earn their wings from the same concrete runways where young airmen trained before heading off to fight the Battles of Midway, Coral Sea, and Leyte Gulf.
Minneapolis roared into the 1920s as a major metropolis, but it lacked the kind of outdoor amusement facilities common elsewhere across the country. In 1925, Fred W. Pearce introduced the Twin Cities to his "Picnic Wonderland." Crowds eagerly poured onto the shores of Lake Minnetonka by the trolley load. Luckily, Excelsior Park survived the Great Depression and World War II on the strength of its celebrity acts. Changes in the forms of transportation, combined with innovations in the outdoor entertainment industry such as Disneyland and an aging infrastructure, eventually forced the park to close its gates.