EDITORS: Graphic available on request

ANN ARBOR—After 300 years at the heart of the Great Lakes, Detroit looks back at its history and forward to its future as a strategic city. In the spring of 1749, King Louis XV’s colonial minister touted the merits of the burgeoning “Fort Du Detroit” by writing, “At all times Detroit has been regarded as an important post.” Detroit grew to become the port of Michigan, a place where, it was reported in 1830, “the finest steamers in the waters come and go every day, connecting the east, and begin already to search out the distant west and north.”

The importance of Detroit and its history is explained and illustrated in “Frontier Metropolis: Picturing Early Detroit 1701-1838” by Brian Leigh Dunnigan, curator of maps at the University of Michigan’s William L. Clements Library.

With early maps and drawings, Dunnigan describes both the topography and biography of the city in the 248 pages, with 287 color illustrations, of the 18-by-13 inch volume.

 Plan of Fort du Detroit, 1749.  Courtesy Brian Leigh Dunnigan, from Archives nationales, France

This is the first overview of Detroit’s formative years, based in large part on new sources to be issued in more than 50 years. “It is a major contribution in numerous historical fields—social and ethnic history, Native American studies, trade and commerce, art and architecture, and of course the history of cartography—providing all sorts of intriguing new leads which should serve many audiences,” says John C. Dann, director of the Clements Library. “It tells and portrays a coherent story of one of this country’s most fascinating and least known colonial cities.”

Although “Frontier Metropolis” has the appearance of a “coffee table book,” it is a notable contribution to academic scholarship. The project originated in the 1930s, when Clements Library Director Randolph G. Adams began assembling an iconography of Detroit. Dunnigan, a noted authority on 18th century military history and architecture, took up where Adams left off, finding more than 100 previously unknown maps and views in libraries, archives, and private collections throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. More than half the maps and views in the publication have never been reproduced before. The few that have been published previously have never been seen in color.

Copies of “Frontier Metropolis” are available from Wayne State University Press at 4809 Woodward Ave., Detroit, MI 48201-1309 or by calling (800) 978-7323.

William L. Clements LibraryJohn C. DannRandolph G. AdamsWayne State University Press