Lapeer: Stone, French, and Michigan's Oldest Courthouse

Lapeer sits at the edge of Michigan's Thumb, and its name is a piece of linguistic history. By local tradition, French traders named the Flint River la pierre, for its stony bed, meaning the stone, which English speakers gradually compressed into Lapeer. The county was carved out by Governor Cass in eighteen twenty-two, and the first settler, Alvin Hart, arrived in eighteen thirty-one.

Hart also commissioned the courthouse that still stands today, constructed in the eighteen forties in a dignified Greek Revival style. That building is now recognized as the oldest original courthouse structure still in active use in the state of Michigan, listed on both the Michigan Historic Site registry and the National Register of Historic Places. A French word for stone anchors a building that has outlasted nearly everything around it.