1700's

1800's

1900's

2000's

1803 - Ohio was admitted to the Union. The state contains the strip of land that 30 years later would be known as the Toledo strip. Michigan becomes part of the Territory of Indiana.

1805 - The Territory of Michigan was created. Detroit was named the capital of Michigan.

1813 - Harrison goes to Washington and leaves Colonel Lewis Cass as the military governor at Detroit.

1817 - The University of Michigan is established as Catholepistemiad.

1818 - Public land sales began at Detroit encouraging immigration form the east.

1824 - Congress appropriates $10,000 for a survey of the Great Sauk Trail, now US 12, between Detroit and Chicago.

1825 - The Erie Canal opens. It brings settlers to Michigan and takes farm products to the East.

1830 - Michigan issues a charter to the Detroit and Pontiac Railway. It is the first incorporated railway in the Northwest Territory.

1831 - Stevens T. Mason became the acting governor of the Michigan Territory by appointment.. He was 19 years old.

1835 - "The Toledo War" Ohio claims the "Toledo Strip." Governor Mason calls out the militia to regain the "Toledo Strip." Arguing goes on through 1836. No shots were ever fired. President Jackson removes Mason because of his actions regarding the "Toledo Strip." Mason was then elected governor at the age of 13.

1835 - Governor Stevens T. Mason states the we have a right to be a state. Michigan had met all the requirements of the Northwest Ordinance to become a state.

1837 - Michigan was admitted to the Union as a free state. (Arkansas was admitted as a slave state.

1837 - February 22, Michigan's first state flag was flown. It was described as an "elegant white silk banner."

1838 - Marks the beginning of the Grand Rapids furniture industry.

1841 - The state's first farm journal is published (The Western Farmer)

1843 -Steven T. Mason, Michigan's First Governor, dies of pneumonia in New York City at the age of 31. (January 4.)

1844 - The first major copper operations begin in the Keweenaw area.

1846 - Michigan becomes the first English speaking jurisdiction in the world to abolish capital punishment.

1848 - The state legislature meets for the first session in the new capitol at Lansing.

1854 - The Republican Party is form at a meeting in Jackson, MI.

1861 - Thomas A. Edison erects his first electrical battery and begins experiments at Fort Gratiot, MI.

1861 - The First Michigan Regiment leave Fort Wayne in Detroit. It is the first western regiment to reach Washington during the Civil War. Over 90,000 Michigan men served in the Civil War.

1864 - The First Michigan Colored Infantry is mustered. Michigan black troops number 1,673.

1869 - January 6th, Henry Baldwn becomes governor of Michigan.

1870 - Annual lumber production for the state averaged 3 million board feet. That is the highest in the country for a period of 20 years.

1879 - The new state capitol at Lansing is dedicated and occupied. The cost of the building was $1.500,000.

1880 - Iron ore is discovered in large quantities at Bessemer in the Gogebic Range.

1883- Sorry kids. A compulsory school attendance law is passed.

1887 - Ransom E. Olds' first auto steamer is built.

1891 - Port Huron Michigan and Sarnia, Ontario, were joined by the Grand Trunk Railroad tunnel under the St. Clair River. The first under water tunnel (it is actually under the ground below the river) to link to foreign countries.

1896 - Ransom E. Olds introduced a practical four wheeled, gasoline powered auto in Lansing. Henry Ford's quadricyle is tested in Detroit.

1898 Kalamazoo Ice Yacht Club forms on Gull Lake. Name of club later changes to the Gull Lake Ice Yacht Club