Alpena (Michigan)
| Alpena | |
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 County Courthouse of the Alpena County in Alpena |
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| Location in Michigan | |
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| Basic data | |
| Foundation : | 1840 |
| State : | United States |
| State : | Michigan |
| County : | Alpena County |
| Coordinates : | 45 ° 4 ′ N , 83 ° 26 ′ W |
| Time zone : | Eastern ( UTC − 5 / −4 ) |
| Residents : | 11,304 (as of: 2000) |
| Population density : | 520.9 inhabitants per km 2 |
| Area : | 23.5 km 2 (approx. 9 mi 2 ) of which 21.7 km 2 (approx. 8 mi 2 ) is land |
| Height : | 180 m |
| Postal code : | 49707 |
| Area code : | +1 989 |
| FIPS : | 26-01740 |
| GNIS ID : | 0620017 |
| Website : | www.alpena.mi.us |
| Mayor : | Carol Shafto |
 Lighthouse at the entrance to the port of Alpena |
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Alpena is a city in the American state of Michigan . The city is the administrative seat of the Alpena County of the same name , and is located on Thunder Bay on Lake Huron . As of 2000, Alpena had a population of around 11,000. Despite its small population, Alpena is by far the largest city in the sparsely populated northeast of Michigan and is its commercial and cultural center.
History and economy
The present-day area of Alpena was ceded by the local Indian tribes in 1819 together with large parts of north-east Michigan in the Treaty of Saginaw . Around 1835 the first white settler settled here for a time, a fisherman named WF Cullings.
When the area was surveyed by a surveying team in 1839 , the property was offered for the entire current city area instead of the wages of a team member for a summer. Nobody accepted the offer, the swampy and lonely area seemed unattractive. The first permanent settler settled in 1854: Daniel Carter came with his wife and daughter and built a log cabin .
In 1856, George N. Fletcher, along with three other men from Detroit, parceled out a village that they named after the Republican presidential candidate John C. Frémont Fremont . Since there was already another Fremont in Michigan , the place was named after Alpena County in 1857 . The word alpena is said to come phonetically from an Indian word for partridge . In 1857 Fletcher opened a shop and an inn, and in 1859 the first sawmill to run on steam was built.
In 1871, Alpena became a city . The city experienced an economic boom, in the meantime there were more than twenty sawmills for timber and shingles , a wood wool factory, a flour mill and two tanneries . In 1903 limestone mining began in quarries.
In 1894, the Detroit & Mackinac Railway was founded, which took the route from Bay City to Alpena (formerly Bay City & Alpena Railway ).
Many of the industries closed again, but the wood and cement industries still exist. Today the Alpena Regional Medical Center is the largest employer in the city. The Alpena County Regional Airport ( IATA airport code KAPN) is located west of the city.
Personalities
- Leon Czolgosz (1873–1901), carried out a fatal assassination attempt on President William McKinley in 1901, born in Alpena
- William Comstock (1877–1949), politician, Governor of Michigan from 1933 to 1935, born in Alpena
- Frank D. Scott (1878–1951), Republican Party politician, House of Representatives from 1915 to 1927
- Ulysse Paquin (1885–1972), Canadian singer
- Roland Gohlke (1929–2000), chemist, born in Alpena
- Stanley Grenz (1950–2005), theologian and ethicist in the Baptist tradition, born in Alpena
Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary
Alpena is home to the administrative headquarters and visitor center of the NOAA- managed Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary , the Great Lakes Maritime Heritage Center. With its exhibitions, the center not only offers extensive information on the maritime history of the Great Lakes, but is also the starting point for sightseeing tours to the numerous wrecks that can usually be found in shallow water in the Thunder Bay area and, due to the specific local conditions, extreme well preserved and can even be seen from the surface of the water. Round trips with glass-bottom boats and an underwater educational trail for divers are offered.
The Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary is the starting point for a small developing tourism industry in Alpena.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c Walter Romig: Michigan Place Names . Wayne State University Press, Detroit 1986, ISBN 081431838X , p. 20.
- ^ A b c d Federal Writers' Project : Michigan: A Guide to the Wolverine State . Oxford University Press, New York 1941, p. 485.
- ^ D&M History ( June 22, 2011 memento in the Internet Archive ) on the Detroit and Mackinac Railway Historical Society website. (Accessed June 23, 2011)
- ↑ Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary | About Us. Retrieved May 7, 2019 .