Detroit Before Detroit

Many of the larger cities of the world share one trait in common, that they look nothing like the original landscape on which they are built.  While London and Manhattan stand out as prime examples of the results of urban development, even smaller cities, such as Detroit, are so heavily altered that one is hard pressed to find a surviving place that looks anything like its natural landscape once did.  What is natural Detroit now?

Detroit is heavily developed, to the same degree that Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Chicago, etc. are, meaning you are just as likely to find concrete as you are soil in a given space.

Detroit has an abundance of small neighborhood parks, but lacks a large body of central urban parks like Buffalo's Delaware Park or Manhattan's Central Park.  There are two parks on the periphery of the city, Belle Isle and Hines Drive, both created over river land difficult to build on.  Park design has been largely based on a recreational initiative, rather than a preservation initiative.

Detroit is extremely flat, with no noticeable hills or valleys (most creeks that would have had such are now underground or simply gone).  The highest point in Detroit, all 675 feet of it, lies near the corner of Wyoming avenue and Outer Drive.  The Detroit river remains the lowest point, with the average water level resting at around 571 feet.  The level elevation gradient is a result of much of the area being the former lake bed of Lake Maumee, which was also partially responsible for forming its soil.

Detroit has soils consisting largely of sand, clay, and some remaining muck soil rich in humus.  While not overly rocky, the soil contains a good assortment of rocks and minerals left by past glaciation.  A good dig through a backyard might even produce some of the same stones you can find on beaches throughout the Great Lakes.

Detroit landscaping often makes use of non-native vegetation.  Even native trees and flowers are usually planted outside of their normal conditions; the lovely maples and oaks might not have been there before.  Lots that remain untended to after human alteration are often taken over by the invasive and destructive tree of heaven.

The east side of Detroit is still somewhat flood prone, not only because of an aging sewer system, but also because some of the area lies in a broad flood plain.

Now, what is true about what pre-settlement Detroit used to be like, and where can remnants be seen?

Much of south east Michigan used to be swampy bottomlands, including the lower areas of Detroit.  In fact, the east side neighborhood known as "Black Bottom" was so called because of its original landscape.  There would have been creeks that pooled a bit in places, but were otherwise extremely wide and maybe only an inch deep where they had standing surface water, sort of like the Everglades. Very little of this remains, and most of it is on Belle Isle in the forested section.

The grasses you see in the background are actually invasive.  Now, to be fair, there would not always be standing water like this, but the soil would have been very spongy otherwise.   The area, after all, was not a true swamp.  The ground I was standing on was fairly solid, and there were slight rises of half a foot here and there which were dry.  Here, and probably in much of the lower portions of Detroit, Black ash was the dominant tree.  There would also be many cottonwoods, and in a few places, you can find old survivors.

In cases like these, the trees were most likely just thought to be lovely and built around.  Now, when the land would rise as little as a foot or so, drainage improved.  Creeks could also form and help clear out water faster, and oaks, hickories, and White ash would start appearing.  On some locations, particularly with sandy soils, White oak would grow in small pockets of prairie, maintained both by the relative aridity of the location, along with fires that could spread easier than in the wet low lying areas.  Dramatic examples of this type of landscape can no longer be found in Detroit proper, although the Oak Openings Preserve of Toledo and Ojibway Prairie Provincial Nature Reserve in Windsor are remnants that can be found nearby.

Woodward avenue and much of the immediate surrounding area downtown are about 40 feet higher than the lower east side and the areas southward leading up to the Rouge river mouth.  Records of the original French settlements on both banks of the river indicate that the area that Cadillac founded the city on in 1703 featured a somewhat prominent sandy bluff that tended to be a bit more hospitable than nearby areas (and provided the most strategic viewpoint).  Despite the waterlogged appearance of the lower areas of the city, conditions must not have been too bad; people settled here, drained what they could, and made use of the muckland for agriculture.  Some of the landscape today even retains land use patterns which began under the Seigneurial system of French settlement.  The most prominent examples remain south of Windsor, though the city grid of the east side of Detroit retains the pattern as well.  As you can see, the straight lines that form blocks of land parcels stand in contrast to the relatively ordered farm squares further inland which were plotted much later.

Also of note in the river front portion of the east side are the numerous canals and harbor indentations which creep in from the river and Lake St. Clair.  Many of these were formerly creeks, including Connor creek.  As noted, nearly all of the water courses in Detroit proper have long since been buried.  Plans are currently underway by both government and private interest groups (such as The Greenway Collaborative) to unearth these streams and recreate them as greenbelts and strip parks.

The land gradually slopes, at a rate of 10 feet per mile or less in places, as it heads toward the north west corner of the city.  In the area of Old Redford, one would most likely see a few more oaks and hickories, and perhaps even the occasional Eastern White pine or Eastern hemlock sticking up through the canopy, provided the soil was drained enough.  The land would look somewhat similar until one would notice that the slope of the terrain was getting a bit more definable, where it would meet the glacial lobe that ran from Adrian, MI up to about Port Huron.  Here, the ashes and their accent oaks and hickories would meet the beech and maple forests of the rest of upland lower Michigan.  Detroit itself, however, would remain the dominion of a relatively lush wet forest.  Think about that the next time you complain about having to water the back lawn.