Ecorse, Michigan: Riviere aux Ecorces

Ecorse carries one of the oldest French place names on the Detroit River. Cadillac granted land here to French settlers as early as seventeen oh seven, and the community that grew from those river-front farms took its name from the Riviere aux Ecorces, the river of tree bark, a name tied to bark that Native peoples gathered for canoes. English speakers later renamed it Grand Port, and by nineteen oh three the unincorporated village, then one of the largest in the United States, was formally incorporated and took back the name Ecorse. That same year Great Lakes Engineering Works opened a shipyard here, launching steel vessels that worked the Great Lakes for decades.