Early History
Early Lake St. Clair
Geologists find the beginnings of Lake St. Clair in the Greatlakean ice advance. "High Lake St. Clair" had an elevation of 590 feet and completely surrounded the area now known as "The Hill" in Grosse Pointe Farms. The crest of the island stretched along the present Kercheval and Ridge Roads. As the Detroit River evolved and began to drain the lake, "Lowest Lake St. Clair" (el. 585 feet) resulted. One of the beaches of the newly enlarged island is the route of present Mack Avenue from East Outer Drive to Eleven Mile Road. Wave action built this valuable ridge of gravel and sand, which became an Indian trail, then a French pathway, and today an important thoroughfare.
First People
Animals and people found their way to this part of Michigan between advances and retreats of the glaciers. Undoubtedly they used the beaches and knolls as later Indian families would: for camping during hunting or trading journeys. The ancient beach line along Mack Avenue has yielded many Indian artifacts. Local amateur archeologist Jerome DeVisscher collected stone points and fragments of clay pots plowed up on his father's farm on Cook Road. He theorizes that paleo-Indians, camping on that beach, refitted their spears for the next day's hunt.
Early French Visitors
Long before the first recorded history of this area, itinerant missionaries and traders used the Detroit-Grosse Pointe shoreline for their camps, and no doubt made contact with local Indians. Their word for this strait was le d'Etroit.
Voyageurs were licensed to operate the canoes of the fur trade indispensable to the fur trade. The first European to pass by the shores of Grosse Pointe probably was one of these canoemen.
In the summer of 1669, French explorer Adrien Joliet was guided down the St. Clair-Detroit waterway by an Iriquois Indian. A decade later, Robert Cavalier de la Salle came up the lakes in the Griffin, called the first sailing vessel on these waters. It was la Salle's party which named Lake Ste. Claire, now anglicized to Lake St. Clair.
