Anywhere on the Face of Creation, but Michigan: Colonizing and Developing the GR Fruit Ridge

After the Great Panic of 1837, eastern Yankees looked west for land. A year earlier, the Treaty of Washington was negotiated, ceding over a third of Michigan’s land mass from the Odawa and Ojibway people. This talk will focus on an important swath of land northwest of Grand Rapids, now known as the Fruit Ridge, or simply “the Ridge,” which was opened for American colonization following these historical turning points. With the help of some newly discovered letters by Yankee settler Adelia Hills, Jayson Otto will add to the fascinating story of this unique ecological and cultural place in Michigan, a space which went from a contested space of poor squatters, dispossessed indigenous farmers, and eastern Yankees to what is now one of the most productive apple regions in the country.