Monroe, Michigan
Michigan
Monroe, Michigan sits on the River Raisin about twelve miles from the Ohio line, a spot where French trappers first camped in the sixteen hundreds. The town was formally platted in eighteen seventeen and named for President James Monroe. It earned an unfortunate footnote in the War of eighteen twelve: the River Raisin Massacre of January eighteen thirteen killed or captured nearly nine hundred fifty American soldiers, becoming the worst U.
S. military defeat of that war. Monroe later grew on paper-mill manufacturing and is perhaps best known today as the birthplace of General George Armstrong Custer, whose childhood home still stands downtown.
The city sits at roughly twenty thousand residents and remains a quiet manufacturing and commercial hub between Toledo and Detroit.
