Belleville, Michigan
Near Ann Arbor, Michigan
The village was platted in eighteen forty-seven and named for a landowner named James Bell. The French phrase is also fitting: beautiful town. For nearly a century Belleville stayed small and rural.
Then in early nineteen twenty-six, the Detroit Edison Company built the French Landing Dam on the Huron River east of town, flooding the valley and creating Belleville Lake, the largest inland lake in Wayne County, covering twelve hundred acres. Belleville incorporated as a city in nineteen forty-six, drawn into the gravitational pull of the growing Detroit metro.
