St. Joseph, Michigan

You're passing through St. Joseph, one of Michigan's oldest European settlements. French fur traders called this spot on the bluff above Lake Michigan home as early as sixteen seventy-nine, when René-Robert Cavelier de La Salle built a fort here.

The American village was incorporated in eighteen thirty-four, and it became the seat of Berrien County in eighteen ninety-four, and its natural harbor made it a busy port for shipping fruit from the surrounding orchards. Peaches, blueberries, and cherries from southwest Michigan still pass through the region in enormous quantities. The landmark Silver Beach amusement park drew Chicagoans by steamboat for nearly eighty years before closing in nineteen seventy-one.

Today the twin cities of St. Joseph and Benton Harbor face each other across the St. Joseph River, one of the starkest economic contrasts in the Midwest.