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Chippewa County

The history of Chippewa County is essentially the history of Sault Ste. Marie, the county’s first settlement, its largest city, and governmental hub.

The Sault began as a French missionary outpost and a station for fur traders and explorers.

But long before the European settlers came to the land, it was inhabited by Indians of the Great Lakes, especially the Chippewa, who camped and fished along the rapids where Lake Superior drops into Lake Huron.

In 1641, twenty-one years after the Mayflower landed in New England, French missionaries were in Chippewa County. They didn’t remain long but, before they left, they named the area Sault de Sainte Marie (or Saint Mary’s rapids).

In 1668, they were back. Two French Catholic missionaries, Father Claude Dablon and Father Jacques Marquette founded a mission there, making Sault Ste. Marie the first permanent European settlement in the Midwest. The mission flourished.

In 1671, a French party that had been sent to the region to look for copper and to find a route to the Orient stopped there and issued a declaration known as the “Pageant of the Sault,” which claimed Lake Huron and Lake Superior, as well as the adjacent regions, as having been discovered for French King Louis XIV.

In the latter part of the 1600s, threat of violence from the Iroquois nation forced missionaries and fur traders to leave the Sault. After peace was established in 1701, French activity was focused on Michilimackinac with its access to the Ohio Valley, the lower lakes, and the Mississippi Valley.

At about the same time, the French closed all of their Lake Superior outposts except one - Chequamego, in the area that is now Wisconsin. Because of its proximity to the far western fur trade, Chequamego became more important to the French than the Sault.

The French were expelled from North America in 1763, and the United States Supreme Court officially ruled their claim to the area to be invalid in 1867.

From 1763 until after the War of 1812, the Sault was a center for British fur trade.

In 1837, after it had become a state, Michigan commissioned the building of a canal connecting Lake Huron with Lake Superior, but the project failed.

After years of congressional fighting, 750,000 acres of federal land was deeded to Michigan in 1852. The state used this land to compensate the company that would make the second attempt at building the canal.

Two 350-foot locks were arranged in tandem, completing a one-mile canal between the two lakes. On June 22, 1855, the “Illinois” became the first ship to pass through the completed locks. The Sault Locks were transferred to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in 1881.

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