This set the stage for the people of Muskegon to successfully pass a City income tax for improved police and fire services.
Intergovernmental cooperation has enabled Muskegon to host a Community Enterprise Zone. The initiative emphasizes family self-sufficiency, new business development and job training skills based on strong work ethics. Employment is at a 25 year high. New jobs and industrial aspirations are finding a place to grow in our industrial parks. The success of these has come from diligent preparation and planning.
The Muskegon Public School system is caught up in the same enthusiasm for improvement. Voters approved a 43 million dollar capital improvement bond issue to upgrade the buildings that have educated generations.
The Muskegon Housing Commission is revitalizing neighborhoods with an award winning, first time homeowner program for new construction. The City of Muskegon is also improving its downtown area and placing renewed emphasis on our waterfront. The Muskegon Museum of Art and Hackley Library, given to the City by Charles Hackley, one of the millionaires of the Lumber era, retain their reputation for excellence.
Our newly renovated sports arena with our own professional Hockey team, is part of the revitalized spirit in our community. This former industrial scrap yard was developed by Muskegon County and has infused the City of Muskegon with a new energy.
For ten days and nights our lakeshore comes alive with our annual Summer Celebration. Heritage Landing has now become a community showplace.
The City of Muskegon, with our commitment to meeting community needs through thoughtful planning and vision continues to improve the quality of life for those who live and work here. The human occupation of the Muskegon area goes back seven or eight thousand years to the nomadic Paleo-Indian hunters who occupied this area following the retreat of the Wisconsonian glaciations.
The Paleo-Indians were succeeded by several stages of woodland Indian development, the most notable of whom were the Hopewellian type cultures that occupied this area perhaps two thousand years ago.
During historic times, the Muskegon area was inhabited by various bands of the Ottawa and Pottawatomi tribes. Perhaps the best remembered of the Indian inhabitants of this area was Ottawa Indian Chief, Pendalouan. No one knows for certain when the first Frenchman visited the Muskegon area, but Father Jacques Marquette traveled northward through this area on his fateful trip to St.
If the French established any trading posts in this vicinity, their locations are not known. The earliest known resident of the county was Edward Fitzgerald, a fur trader and trapper who visited the Muskegon area in and who died here, reportedly being buried in the vicinity of White Lake.
Sometime between and , a French-Canadian trader named Joseph La Framboise established a trading post at the mouth of Duck Lake. Settlement of Muskegon began in earnest in when Muskegon Township was organized as a subdivision of Ottawa County. One of the earliest settlers, Henry Pennoyer, was elected as the first township supervisor in As a corporate entity, Muskegon County dates from Prior to that time, the southern three-quarters of the County were part of Ottawa County while the northern quarter belonged to Oceana County.
At the time of the organization of the county in , the county was divided into only six townships including Muskegon, Norton, Ravenna, White River, Dalton, and Oceana, with a total population of 3, The commencement of the lumber industry in inaugurated what some regard as the most romantic era in the history of the region. The typical lumberman of that era was a young man in his twenties or thirties from New England, New York, or Pennsylvania who had enjoyed sufficient success in some previous occupation to build a small mill and to make a modest investment in Michigan timber lands.
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the lumbering era was fading away. The local economy was severely depressed, the community disorganized, and the population restive and demoralized. Led by area industrialists, including Newcomb Mc Graft, Charles Hackley, and Thomas Hume, the community organized a program of economic development, which attracted several substantial businesses to the community. Before long, Muskegon was well on its way to becoming a diversified industrial center, having attracted such firms as Shaw-Walker, Brunswick, Campbell, Continental Motors, and the Central Paper Mill to this area.
Factories cut back on production and laid off employees in unprecedented numbers. Many area businesses closed their doors permanently. Over the years, Muskegon has attracted a unique mix of residents, which has helped to shape the cultural and intellectual makeup of the community. The original settlers of the nineteenth century were typically native-born Americans from New England, New York and Pennsylvania. The industrial surge at the turn of the nineteenth century attracted large numbers of Southern Europeans to the area, while World War II witnessed the arrival of large numbers of Mexican-Americans, Southern blacks, and Appalachian whites.
A few days after Christmas in , Mr. Charles H. Hackley thought about the lack of a public park in the City of Muskegon and decided to give one. In February, he started obtaining options on lots in the square bounded by Third and Fourth streets and Clay and Webster Avenues. His options did not include houses, which were to be retained by owners and moved to other locations. Consider, for instance, the year-old auditorium at Muskegon High.
Its plaster walls are covered with areas that are in various stages of peeling. When the lights are turned on during a show, the audience can see flakes of plaster floating above the stage like snowflakes a distraction to any other production save perhaps A Christmas Carol. The auditorium also sorely needs to modernize a lighting system centered on increasingly obsolete electric bulbs. With the theater industry rapidly shifting to LED bulbs, electric lightbulbs are becoming less common.
Without an upgrade to LED lighting, Muskegon risks being unable to replace its current bulbs at a reasonable cost.
According to Sam Wiltheiss, Director of Buildings and Maintenance for Muskegon City Schools, when the auditorium is full and all the lights are on, the space gets so hot that staff must open the fire dampers behind the stage, exposing the facility to the elements.
The high school is comprised of eight different buildings, erected between and Consequently, the boiler is located at one end of the campus, and the steam heat must be pushed through underground pipes all winter long.
This takes extra time to warm up the buildings. Heating multiple buildings costs more, and energy costs also soar because the steam must be pushed over a longer distance to reach the buildings. Larger, aging grounds with fewer students also mean higher maintenance costs. If the sinking fund had passed, the district would have renovated some of its parking lots and prevent the regular recurrence of sinkholes.
Until a sinking fund gets approved by voters, higher repair costs for numerous emergencies will continue to eat into instructional spending. As the high school was steadily cobbled together, the additions were rarely renovated. Downsizing is difficult, because each component of the school contains a different important feature—whether a gym, auditorium, library or cafeteria.
The material is bubbling over at every seam, even in the center of the floor, detaching from the concrete subfloor underneath. And so, like many of the physical problems that confront the district, school officials can only stand and watch the problems take their toll.
Click here to go to the main photo essay page. Click here to read about Beecher. Click here to read about Hamtramck. Click here to read about Rudyard. Click here to read about Sodus. Structural Flaws: Muskegon City Schools. Facebook Twitter Reddit Email Print. Photography and essay by Kate Levy One of the oldest public-school districts in part of the state, the Muskegon City Schools district has spent more than years educating children in and around the southwestern Michigan community.
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