General resources

City of Detroit Historic Fort Wayne Strategic Plan and Strategic Plan Appendices

Detroit Historical Society Online Collections – Fort Wayne (please note - this does not include every item related to Historic Fort Wayne; other helpful search terms include “Detroit River,” “Delray,” “Fortifications,” “Riverfront")

Detroit News – Historic Fort Wayne Photo Gallery

Videos

“The Fort Wayne Story" (1959) presented by the Detroit Historical Museum and Detroit Historical Society, hosted by Glenn G. Stille, curator of military history. In the later portion he is joined by Robert E. Lee, exhibits preparator at the Fort Wayne Military Museum.

History of Detroit

Blois, J.T. (1838). Gazeteer of the State of Michigan. Sydney L. Rood, ed. Detroit, Michigan. https://www.loc.gov/resource/lhbum.18627/?st=gallery 

Burton, C. M. (1922a). The City of Detroit, Michigan, 1701-1922 (Vol. 1). S.J. Clarke Publishing Company.

Burton, C. M. (1922b). The City of Detroit, Michigan, 1701-1922 (Vol. 2). S.J. Clarke Publishing Company.  

Carter, C.E. (1951). “The Territory of Michigan 1805-1820.” In The Territorial Papers of the United States, Vol. 10. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Territorial_Papers_of_the_United_Sta/6YVHAQAAMAAJ?hl=en 

Evolution of Michigan’s Legal Boundaries. (n.d.). Michigan State University Libraries Map Library. https://lib.msu.edu/map/Miboundaries  

Farmer, S. (1884). The History of Detroit and Michigan: Or, The Metropolis Illustrated: A Chronological Cyclopaedia of the Past and Present, Including a Full Record of Territorial Days in Michigan, and the Annals of Wayne County. Harvard, Cambridge: Silas Farmer & Company.

Hubbard, B. (1887). Memorials of a Half-Century. New York: G.P. Putman and Sons.

Lassiter, M. D., and the Policing and Social Justice HistoryLab. (2021). Detroit Under Fire: Police Violence, Crime Politics, and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Civil Rights Era. University of Michigan Carceral State Project. https://policing.umhistorylabs.lsa.umich.edu/s/detroitunderfire/page/1967. 

Mansfield, J. B. (Ed.) (1899), History of the Great Lakes. Volume I, Chicago: J. H. Beers & Co., https://www.maritimehistoryofthegreatlakes.ca//documents/hgl/default.asp?ID=c007 

Rector, J,J. (2017). Accumulating Risk: Environmental Justice And The History Of Capitalism In Detroit, 1880-2015. Wayne State University Dissertations. 1738. https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/oa_dissertations/1738 

Indigenous History

Bellfy, P. (2011). Three Fires Unity: The Anishinaabeg of the Lake Huron Borderlands. University of Nebraska Press.

Jewell, P. (2021). “It’s all Waawiyaatanong.” Planet Detroit. https://planetdetroit.org/2021/10/its-all-waawiyaatanong/. 

Johnston, B. (1976). Ojibwe Heritage. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

Johnston, B. (1981). Tales the elders told: Ojibway legends. Royal Ontatio Museum.  https://archive.org/details/taleselderstoldo0000john  

Mays, K. (2015). Indigenous Detroit: Indigeneity, Modernity, and Racial and Gender Formation in a Modern American City, 1871-2000 [University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign]. http://hdl.handle.net/2142/78653. 

Mays, K. (2021). Op-ed: Untold stories of urban Indigenous women need to be heard. Daily Bruin. https://dailybruin.com/2021/11/25/op-ed-untold-stories-of-urban-indigenous-women-need-to-be-heard-2/ 

Mays, K. (2022). City of Dispossessions: Indigenous Peoples, African Americans, and the Creation of Modern Detroit. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 

Red Sky’s Migration Chart: Ojibwe. (2015). The Decolonial Atlas.  https://decolonialatlas.wordpress.com/2015/05/18/red-skys-migration-chart/ 

Sleeper-Smith, S. (1994). Silent tongues, black robes: Potawatomi, Europeans, and settlers in the southern Great Lakes, 1640-1850. University of Michigan.

Teasdale, G. 2012. Old Friends and New Foes: French Settlers and Indians in the Detroit River Border Region. Michigan Historical Review 38(2): 35-62. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5342/michhistrevi.38.2.0035 

Treaty with the Wyandot, Etc. [1814] (Treaty of Springwells). (1814). https://www.potawatomiheritage.com/encyclopedia/treaty-with-the-wyandot-etc/v 

Vishanoff, R. (2023). Colonial and Intertribal Wars: Beaver Wars (1628-1701). Nottawaseppi Band of Huron Potawatomi. https://www.potawatomi.org/blog/2023/01/06/colonial-and-intertribal-wars-beaver-wars-1628-1701/.

White, R. (1991). The Middle Ground Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815. Cambridge University Press.

Springwells and Delray

Au, D. (2003). The Muskrat French: The Survival of French Canadian Folklife on the American Side of Le Détroit. In Le Passage du Détroit: 300 ans de présence francophone, edited by Marcel Beneteau. University of Windsor Press, Windsor, ON.

Detroit Historical Society. (n.d.). Ribbon Farms | Detroit Historical Society. In Encyclopedia of Detroit. Detroit Historical Society. https://detroithistorical.org/learn/encyclopedia-of-detroit/ribbon-farms 

Dunnigan, B. L. (2014). Detroit’s ribbon farms: “their way of Settlmt is much more plaisant & less convenient than ours”. The Free Library. https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Detroit%27s+ribbon+farms%3A+%22their+way+of+Settlmt+is+much+more+plaisant+%26...-a0319975274 

Fader, R. G. (1978). Springwells—150 Years Later—Roots & Branches. The Dearborn HIstorian, 18(3).

Judson, P. M. (1926). Sketch of the Life of Father Gabriel Richard 1767-1832. Records of the American Catholic Historical Society of Philadelphia, 37(3), 250–297. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44208653 

LaForest, J. (2014). “Muskrat French”: Origins of a Culture, a Language, and a People. Michigan Historical Review, 40(2), 87–100. https://doi.org/10.5342/michhistrevi.40.2.0087

Marrero, K. L. (2020). Detroit’s Hidden Channels: The Power of French-Indigenous Families in the Eighteenth Century. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.

Sewick, P. (2018). The origins and demise of Delray. Curbed Detroit. https://detroit.curbed.com/2018/5/3/17314922/the-origins-demise-delray.

Underground Railroad in Detroit

Dorman, J. L. (2017). Exploring Detroit’s Underground Railroad Sites. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/travel/detroit-michigan-windsor-canada-river-underground-railroad-slavery.html

Frost, K. S., & Tucker, V. S. (Eds.). (2016). A Fluid Frontier Slavery, Resistance, and the Underground Railroad in the Detroit River Borderland. Wayne State University Press.

Miles, T. (2017). The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Slavery and Freedom in the City of the Straits. The New Press. 

Samuel Zug. Elmwood Historic Cemetery. (n.d.). https://elmwoodhistoriccemetery.org/images/bios/Samuel%20Zug%20Biographies_7_2020.pdf 

Military History

Baime, A. J. (2014). The Arsenal of Democracy: FDR, Detroit, and an Epic Quest to Arm an America at War. United States: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Conway, J., & Jamroz, D. (2007). Detroit’s Historic Fort Wayne (MI). Arcadia Publishing. 

Cram, T.J. (1868). Report upon the Subject of Supplying Water to the Soldiers Located Within the Walls of Fort Wayne, and the Officers, Laundresses, Musicians, Servants, Horses Domiciled Outside the Fort on Public Ground. Report to the United States Army Corps of Engineers.

Davis, M.W.R. (2007). Detroit's Wartime Industry: Arsenal of Democracy. Arcadia Publishing. 

Dunnigan, B.L. (2001). "Fortress Detroit, 1701–1826". In Skaggs, David Curtis & Nelson, Larry L. (eds.). The Sixty Years' War for the Great Lakes, 1754–1814. Michigan State University Press. pp. 167–185. 

Fredriksen, J.C. (2016). The War of 1812 U.S. War Department Correspondence, 1812-1815. Jefferson: North Carolina.

Gilpin, A.R. (2012). The War of 1812 in the Old Northwest. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.

Hyde, C. K. (2013). Arsenal of Democracy: The American Automobile Industry in World War II. Wayne State University Press. 

Hull, W. (1824). Memoirs of the Campaign of the North Western Army of the United States, AD 1812: In a Series of Letters Addressed to the Citizens of the United States, with an Appendix, Containing a Brief Sketch of the Revolutionary Services of the Author. Boston: True & Greene. 

Kiel, D. (2013). The War of 1812: Official National Park Service Handbook. Virginia Beach: Donning Company Publishers.

McDonnell, M.A. (2015). Masters of Empire: Great Lakes Indians and the Making of America. Hill and Wang, New York.

McLaughlin, S. J. (2013). The Patriot War Along the Michigan-Canada Border: Raiders and Rebels. History Press. 

Stone, J. (n.d.). Detroit: The “Arsenal Of Democracy”. Detroit Historical Society. https://detroithistorical.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/AoD%20Paperv2.pdf 

Phenix, William P. (1982). Never a Shot in Anger. Michigan History Magazine, 22.

Yanik, A.J. (2011). The Fall and Recapture of Detroit in the War of 1812: In Defense of William Hull. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. 

Zoski, S. (2023). William Iverson Jr.: A Century of Driving America Forward. School of Social Work, Wayne State University. https://socialwork.wayne.edu/news/william-iverson-jr-a-century-of-driving-america-forward-44002 

New Deal Programs

Clemens, E. (2008). The Works Progress Administration in Detroit. Charleston: Arcadia Press. 

Smyser, B. (1961). Service to Isolated Sites: Fort Wayne Michigan. Art Education, 14(8), 15–16. https://doi.org/10.2307/3186773 

Tuskegee Airmen Museum

Ash, A. (2023). Tuskegee Airmen Museum Unveils New Detroit Facility. The Michigan Chronicle. https://michiganchronicle.com/2023/04/02/tuskegee-airmen-museum-unveils-new-multi-million-dollar-detroit-facility/. 

Highsmith, C. M. (2019). The Tuskegee Airmen Museum on the grounds of Historic Fort Wayne, now a historical outdoor museum in Detroit, Michigan’s, industrial Delray neighborhood (Michigan - Detroit) [Photograph]. Library of Congress. https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/highsm.60396 

The National Museum of the Tuskegee Airmen. (n.d.). The Tuskegee Airmen. The National Museum of the Tuskegee Airmen. https://tuskegeemuseum.org/history/ 
Tuskegee Airmen Museum. (n.d.). City of Detroit. https://detroitmi.gov/departments/airport-coleman-young-international/tuskegee-airmen-museum

Ecological and Natural History

Comer, P.J., D.A. Albert, H.A. Wells, B.L. Hart, J.B. Raab, D.L. Price, D.M. Kashian, R.A. Corner & D.W. Schuen (map interpretation); T.R. Leibfreid, M.B. Austin, C.J. DeLain, L. Prange-Gregory, L.J. Scrimger, K.M. Korroch, & JG. Spitzley (digital map production). (1995). Michigan’s Presettlement Vegetation, as Interpreted from the General Land Office Surveys 1816-1856. Michigan Natural Features Inventory, Lansing, MI.

Detroit River. (n.d.). American Rivers. https://www.americanrivers.org/river/detroit-river/ 

Detroit River, Ontario. (n.d.). Canadian Heritage Rivers System. https://chrs.ca/en/rivers/detroit-river 

France, R. L. (2007). Detroit [Re]Turns to Nature. In Handbook of Regenerative Landscape Design. CRC Press.

Graustein, J.E. (ed.). Nutthall’s Travels into the Old Northwest: An Unpublished Diary. Chronica Botanica, Vol. 14, no. 1 &2:1-88. https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/004395014 

Hartig, J. H., Francoeur, S. N., Ciborowski, J. J. H., Gannon, J. E., Sanders, C. E., Galvao-Ferreira, P., Knauss, C. R., Gell, G., & Berk, K. (2021). An ecosystem health assessment of the Detroit River and western Lake Erie. Journal of Great Lakes Research, 47(4), 1241–1256. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jglr.2021.05.008 

Hartig, J. H., Robinson, R. S., & Zarull, M. A. (2010). Designing a Sustainable Future through Creation of North America’s only International Wildlife Refuge. Sustainability, 2, 3110–3128. https://doi.org/doi:10.3390/su2093110 

Hartig, J.H., Zarull, M.A., Ciborowski, J.J.H. et al. (2009). Long-term ecosystem monitoring and assessment of the Detroit River and Western Lake Erie. Environmental Monitoring and  Assessment 158, 87–104. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-008-0567-0

Henson, B. L., Kraus, D. T., McMurty, M. J., & Ewert, D. N. (2010). Islands of Life: A Biodiversity and Conservation Atlas of the Great Lakes Islands. Nature Conservancy of Canada. https://www.conservationgateway.org/Documents/Islands-of-Life-final-4-printers.pdf 

International Wildlife Refuge Alliance. (n.d.). Byways to Flyways: A Driving Tour of Featured Birding Locations in the Windsor-Detroit Metropolitan Region. International Wildlife Refuge Alliance. http://npshistory.com/brochures/nwr/detroit-river-birding.pdf 

Nye, D. E. (2016). Narrating the Contested Space of Detroit’s River Rouge, 1600–2015. Zeitschrift Für Anglistik Und Amerikanistik, 64(1), 27–41. https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa-2016-0004 

Priority Region: Detroit River & the St. Clair Flats. (2022, May 23). Audubon Great Lakes. https://gl.audubon.org/coastal-wetlands/priority-region-detroit-river-st-clair-flats 

Read, J. (2018). Restoring Fish Spawning Habitat in the St. Clair and Detroit Rivers. University of Michigan Graham Sustainability Institute. https://graham.umich.edu/project/restoring-fish-spawning-habitat-st-clair-and-detroit-rivers

Sherzer, W. H. (1911). Geological Report on Wayne County (Annual Report of the Board of Geological and Biological Survey for 1911, 12:9; Geological Series). State of Michigan. https://www.michigan.gov/-/media/Project/Websites/egle/Documents/Programs/OGMD/Catalog/13/PU-12-Aopt.pdf?rev=015da60b30f741d8a9d60ce3975e010c 

Vaccaro, L., D. Bennion, J. Boase, M. Bohling, J. Chiotti, J. Craig, R. Drouin, J. Fischer, G. Kennedy, B. Manny, J. Read,  E. Roseman and M. Thomas. (2016). Science in Action: Lessons Learned from Fish Spawning Habitat Restoration in the St. Clair and Detroit Rivers. [MICHU-16-501] Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan. https://graham.umich.edu/media/pubs/Reef_Lessons_Learned.pdf 

U.S. Department of Agriculture. (2019). Riparian Research and Management: Past, Present, Future: Volume 1. 

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2015). Detroit River Tributaries and related Michigan AOCs [Overviews and Factsheets]. https://www.epa.gov/great-lakes-aocs/detroit-river-tributaries-and-related-michigan-aocs 

State of Michigan Registry of Historic Sites: P 25117, Listed February 19, 1978.
National Register of Historic Sites: #71000425, Listed May 6, 1971