Place:Ypsilanti, Washtenaw, Michigan, United States

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

source: Family History Library Catalog

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Ypsilanti (often mispronounced ), commonly shortened to Ypsi, is a city in Washtenaw County in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 19,435. The city is bounded to the north by the Charter Township of Superior and on the west, south, and east by the Charter Township of Ypsilanti. Ypsilanti is also east of Ann Arbor.

The geographic grid center of Ypsilanti is the intersection of the Huron River and Michigan Avenue, the latter of which connects downtown Detroit, Michigan with Chicago, Illinois, and through Ypsilanti is partially concurrent with U.S. Route 12 Business and M-17.

On July 23, 2007 Governor Jennifer Granholm announced that Ypsilanti, along with the cities of Caro and Clio, was chosen by the Michigan State Housing Development Authority (MSHDA) to take part in the Blueprints for Michigan's Downtowns program. The award provides for an economic development consultant to assist Ypsilanti in developing a growth and job creation strategy for the downtown area.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Originally a trading post established in 1809 by Gabriel Godfroy, a French-Canadian fur trader from Montreal, a permanent settlement was established on the east side of the Huron River in 1823 by Major Thomas Woodruff. It was incorporated into the Territory of Michigan as the village Woodruff's Grove. A separate community a short distance away on the west side of the river was established in 1825 under the name "Ypsilanti", after Demetrius Ypsilanti, a hero in the Greek War of Independence. Woodruff's Grove changed its name to Ypsilanti in 1829, the year its namesake effectively won the Greek war, and the two communities eventually merged.

A bust of Demetrius Ypsilanti stands between a Greek and a US flag at the base of the landmark Ypsilanti Water Tower.

• 1809 - Trading post established by French-Canadian Gabriel Godfroy from Montreal
• 1823 - Village of Woodruff's Grove platted
• 1825 - April 21, Plat recorded under the name Ypsilanti
• 1827 - Ypsilanti Township organized
• 1832 - June 19, Woodruff's Grove re-organized and incorporated as the Village of Ypsilanti
• 1849 - Eastern Michigan University founded as Michigan State Normal School
• 1858 - February 4, the Village of Ypsilanti reincorporated as a city
• 1890 - Michigan's first interurban, the Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti Street Railway, begins service
• 1890 - The Ypsilanti Water Tower is completed
• 1929 - Miller Moters Hudson opens, it eventually becomes the last Hudson dealership in the world
• 1931 - McKenny Union, the first student union on the campus of a teachers' college when it opened.
• 1959 - Eastern Michigan becomes a university
• 1960 - Tom Monaghan founds Domino's Pizza as DomiNick's Pizza at 507 W. Cross St, Ypsilanti.
• 1967 - Ypsilanti resident John Norman Collins is suspected of being the perpetrator of the Michigan murders, a series of murders of coeds at the University of Michigan and Eastern Michigan University. He was convicted in 1969, but of only one of the murders.
• 1990 - Eastern Michigan University achieves its highest student enrollment of 26,000
• 1998 - The Michigan Firehouse Museum is established preserving a firehouse built in 1898.

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 mark:(line, white) 
 at:1809 text:"1809-Trading post established by Godfroy"
 at:1823 text:"1823-Village of Woodruff's Grove platted"
 at:1827 text:"1827-Ypsilanti Township organized"
 at:1832 text:"1832-Village of Ypsilanti established"
 at:1849 text:"1849-Michigan State Normal School founded"
 at:1858 text:"1858-Village of Ypsilanti established as a city"
 at:1890 text:"1890-AA&YRy starts, water tower opens"   
 at:1929 text:"1929-Miller Moters Hudson opens"
 at:1960 text:"1960-DomiNick's (Domino's) Pizza founded"
 at:1967 text:"1969-John Norman Collins & Michigan murders"
 at:1990 text:"1990-EMU achieves enrollment of 26,000"
 at:1998 text:"1998-Michigan Firehouse Museum is established"

Automotive history

Ypsilanti has played an important role in the automobile industry. From 1920-1922, Apex Motors produced the "ACE" car. It was in Ypsilanti that Preston Tucker (whose family owned the Ypsilanti Machine Tool Company) designed and built the prototypes for his Tucker '48. Tucker's story was related in the film , directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

In 1945, Henry J. Kaiser and Joseph W. Frazer bought the nearby Willow Run B-24 Liberator bomber plant from Ford Motor Company, and started to make Kaiser and Frazer model cars in 1947. The last Kaiser car made in Ypsilanti rolled off the assembly line in 1953, when the company merged with Willys-Overland and moved production to Toledo, Ohio. General Motors purchased the Kaiser Frazer plant, and converted it into its Hydramatic Division (now called its Powertrain division), beginning production in November 1953. The GM Powertrain Division ceased production at this facility in 2010.

Ypsilanti is also the location of the last Hudson automobile dealership. Today, the former dealership is the site of the Ypsilanti Automotive Heritage Museum. The museum is the home to an original Fabulous Hudson Hornet race car, which inspired the character "Doc Hudson" in the recent animated film Cars developed by Pixar.

Political history

In the early 1970s, along with neighboring city of Ann Arbor, the citizens reduced the penalty for the use and sale of marijuana to $5 (the Ypsilanti Marijuana Initiative; see also the Human Rights Party). When Ypsilanti prosecuted a man possessing 100 pounds of cannabis under state law, the defense argued he should have been charged under Ypsilanti's ordinance. The trial judge declared the ordinance's requirement that Ypsilanti prosecute only under city law unenforceable. An appeal court upheld the trial judge's ruling. Later, Ypsilanti City Council, using its power of codification, deleted the ordinance.

In 1979, Faz Husain was elected to the Ypsilanti city council, the first Muslim and the first native of India to win elected office in Michigan.

In the 1990s Ypsilanti became the first city in Michigan to pass a living wage ordinance.

In the late 1990s, the city adopted an ordinance to ban discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodation on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity/transgender status, body weight (i.e., being obese or underweight). Two ballot measures to repeal the ordinance were led and bankrolled by conservatives, including Tom Monaghan. Both measures failed, the second by a larger percentage than the first.

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