Marine City, the town that built ships

Marine City looks like a quiet riverfront town today, full of boutiques, cafes, and a well-loved little theatre. But in the 1800s it was one of the great shipbuilding towns of the Great Lakes, and for a while this small place turned out more ships than cities many times its size.

It started as a settlement called Newport, became a village in 1865, and a city in 1887. By then the riverbank was lined with shipyards, more than thirty of them over the years, where crews built the wooden schooners and steamers that hauled lumber, grain, and passengers all over the lakes. Each spring, great rafts of logs floated down the St. Clair River to be cut, and the discovery of salt deep underground gave the town a second industry on top of boats.

The wooden-ship business faded in the early 1900s as steel hulls took over, but the town it built is still here. The grand homes of the old captains and shipbuilders still line the streets, and Marine City has turned its history into its charm, looking out at the same broad river it has watched for generations.