The Early History of Royal Oak Township

When Royal Oak Township was established in 1833, it was a rural community spanning 36 square miles. Its borders correspond to today's Eight Mile Road, Dequindre Road, Fourteen Mile Road, and Greenfield Road.

The Mile Roads

On the outskirts of Detroit and in the suburbs, the land is covered by a gridiron network of concrete roads conveniently spaced one mile apart, sometimes referred to as the "mile road system". Some of these roads are named for their distance from downtown Detroit, beginning with Five Mile Road and continuing all the way up to Thirty-Seven Mile Road in northern Macomb County. This grid has such a dominance over the landscape that it is visible from outer space.

How Farmington & Farmington Hills Got Their Shapes

Blue = Farmington Hills; lavender = Farmington.

On July 1, 2023, Farmington Hills celebrates the 50th anniversary of its incorporation as a city. This blog post documents every municipal border change which occured in this area, leading up to the shape the city would take on upon its founding in 1973.

Detroit Borders VI: Highland Park

Facing west on Highland Park's south border with Detroit at Woodward Avenue.

This article is the sixth in a series exploring the Detroit city limits in detail. The last post in this series, The Annexations of 1916, covers the history of the additions to Detroit which enveloped Highland Park and Hamtramck. Highland Park's border today runs for just over seven miles, sharing the boundary for one quarter of a mile with Hamtramck and the rest with Detroit.

The Origin of the Water Affordability Crisis in Highland Park

(Virtual Motor City)

The City of Highland Park once operated its own independent municipal water supply, from June 1915 through December 2012. Toward the end of that period, while the city was under emergency state financial oversight, inspections had found that the facility had suffered from years of deferred maintenance and was therefore "temporarily" shut down as a precautionary measure. Switching the city over to Detroit's water system has resulted in an ongoing logistical, legal and financial nightmare, with residents of Michigan's poorest city receiving questionable water bills, some totaling thousands of dollars. In a recent setback, Highland Park was ordered to pay $21 million in unpaid water and sewerage bills by a Michigan appellate court in August 2021.

This situation has given rise to certain questions. Would this have happened if Highland Park never built a separate water facility? Why exactly did the city want an independent waterworks to begin with? Answering these questions may shed some light on the position Highland Park finds itself in today.

Highland Park IV: The Davison, Detroit's First Freeway

(Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library)

This is the fourth installment in an ongoing series covering the development history of Highland Park:

• Part I: Before Ford explores the early origins of the Village of Highland Park as an upper-class suburb which had to borrow heavily in order to provide basic services.
• Part II: The Road to Cityhood covers the effects of Henry Ford's arrival on the village and influence afterward. Included is a detailed history of the city's original waterworks.
• Part III: Ford Gave and Ford Hath Taken Away shows how the city engaged in a building program culminating with the McGregor Library, right before Ford abruptly terminated Model T production in 1927, triggering Highland Park's nearly 100-year population decline.

The subject of today's post is the Davison Freeway—the original, which was open from 1942 until 1996, when it was rebuilt completely. This is the history of how a residential street in Highland Park came to be among the first modern urban expressways in the nation, and how planners at the time came to favor freeway construction within densely populated cities.

Highland Park Part III: Ford Gave, and Ford Hath Taken Away

(The Henry Ford)

This is Part Three in a series covering the historical development of the City of Highland Park. Part One documents the original village's founding by silver baron Captain William H. Stevens as an exclusive community, real estate enterprise, and tax haven for the wealthy. Part Two begins with the arrival of the Ford Motor Company, which exercised powerful influence over the local government, most notably in obtaining a state-of-the-art independent waterworks, built chiefly to satisfy the factory's need for 30 million gallons of water per day. This installment begins in 1918, just after the Village of Highland Park was incorporated as a city.

Highland Park Part II: The Road to Cityhood

Facing east down Manchester Avenue in 1911, as a Ford factory addition rises in the foreground.
(Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library)

As we saw in part one of this series, the Village of Highland Park was established in the 1880s with the intention of becoming an exclusive residential suburb with low taxes and constantly rising land values. In order to accomplish this, the village government took on as much debt as it could and levied extremely high assessments for sewer construction and other improvements. Highland Park was headed down the same path as the Village of Saint Clair Heights: ultimately choosing annexation to Detroit when it could no longer function independently. This suburb, however, was about to be saved by a once-in-a-lifetime addition to its tax rolls, thanks to an ambitious Detroit capitalist who was looking to move his business out of the city and build a whole new factory complex up in the suburbs.