Southgate: the city that took three tries to be born

Becoming a city took Southgate the better part of three years and more than one defeat. The land had always been a slice of the old Township of Ecorse, which back in territorial days was the biggest township by area in the whole region — more than 50 square miles. By the 1950s the open farm country between Detroit and the Downriver river towns was filling up fast with houses, and the people there decided they wanted to govern themselves.

The push started with a petition to the Wayne County Board of Supervisors in November 1955. A favorable referendum followed in October 1956. Then came the slog: a first try at writing a city charter failed in December 1957 before a second, successful charter passed in September 1958. Official cityhood finally arrived on October 8, 1958. You can read the determination in the population numbers — under 2,000 people in 1940, 10,000 by 1950, and nearly 30,000 by 1960. The fields were turning into a suburb almost overnight, and the new residents wanted their own police, fire, and parks instead of waiting on a sprawling township.

The name fit the moment and the map. Southgate sits at the southern approach into metro Detroit, a kind of gateway coming up from the south — and a big new shopping center going in nearby carried the Southgate name too, which sealed it.

The boom held for a while, peaked around 1970 at better than 33,000, and has eased back since. But the bones of that 1950s rush are everywhere: a young, tidy grid of postwar houses, a 1976 municipal complex, and a city that exists because a few thousand people decided a 50-square-mile township was simply too big to share.