Michigan's first capitol was located in Detroit. After the legislature moved the location of the capital city to Lansing in 1847, the building was used as a school. It was destroyed by fire in 1893.
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FIRST, SOME HISTORY . . .
Michigan's Three Capitols
Lansing was not Michigan's first capital city. French fur traders and missionaries traveled the upper Great Lakes as early as the 1660s. In 1668 the Jesuit mission at Sault Ste. Marie became the first permanent European settlement in what is now Michigan. If there had been a capital of the region at that time, it would have been the little settlement at Sault Ste. Marie.
The military post at Michilimackinac was founded a few years later and served for a quarter of a century as the center of French influence on the Great Lakes. Then Cadillac convinced the French court that a post on the Detroit River would be more advantageous. Detroit, founded in 1701, became the most important settlement in the western Great Lakes region, and remained so even after the British defeated the French in the 1760s.
In 1787, after more than a century of French and British rule, the Michigan region was set aside by the United States government as part of the old Northwest Territory. Then, in 1805, Congress created the Territory of Michigan and chose General William Hull as its first governor. On July 1, 1805, Detroit became the capital of the new territory, with various locations in the city serving at different times as the seat of government.
Michigan's first capitol was located in Detroit. After the legislature moved the location of the capital city to Lansing in 1847, the building was used as a school. It was destroyed by fire in 1893.