Mount Pleasant

By Jack R. Westbrook

Since 1860, Mount Pleasant has been a center for Native American culture, lumbering, agriculture, oil and gas production, collegiate learning, and retail shopping; Mount Pleasant now boasts one of the largest gaming casino resorts in Midwest America.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Release date: Nov 15, 2006
• ISBN: 9781439633212

Jack R. Westbrook

Jack R. Westbrook, Mt. Pleasant, Michigan author, was Managing Editor of the Michigan Oil & Gas News in that city 1973-2001. In 2005, Westbrook worked with Clarke Historical Library at the Mount Pleasant Michigan campus of Central Michigan University, cataloging more than 18,000 petroleum history photos, identifying many and creating a searchable photo database of more than 5,000 photos of industry people 1933-2005. For three years he was a monthly contributor to Michigan Traveler magazine before leaving that pursuit early in 2006 to pursue book projects. He now writes a regular photo history column for the Morning Sun, Mt. Pleasant’s daily newspaper.He has written and/or edited three books about Michigan’s oil and gas industry: and Michigan Oil and Gas, a photo history of the industry released by Arcadia Publishing in September, 2006.Westbrook also wrote Mount Pleasant Then and Now. He has written six more photo history books and one novel since. Westbrook wrote articles regarding the Michigan petroleum exploration and production industry in national trade and statewide general press publications. As a speaker on Michigan petroleum history, he has addressed every Michigan petroleum industry trade organization and numerous civic organizations in Michigan, as well as groups in Washington D.C. and Boston MA; including being the only non-attorney ever to keynote the Michigan Bar Association Oil and Gas Workshop in 1990. In the mid-1980s,Westbrook is a public speaker and has appeared at book signings and/or speeches 154 times since September, 2008

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INTRODUCTION

No book this small could begin to capture the images touching all aspects of this central Michigan village that became a city. Two previous Arcadia Publishing books have examined three major facets of Mount Pleasant life. William Cron’s Mount Pleasant leaned heavily on the saga of the Chippewa Indian tribe and Central Michigan University’s influence on the town. My own Michigan Oil and Gas told the story of the industry that spared Mount Pleasant from the Great Depression. This book will concentrate on downtown and the nucleus of town life until about the early 1960s, with only an occasional foray into nearer dates.

I had accumulated more than 500 historical photographs of Mount Pleasant after completing another project and sought to fill in some holes for this book from photographs in local libraries. Searching conventional sources revealed a dearth of organized Mount Pleasant historical photographic files. Even with what I was able to find, there are still some valuable images not available in a central source.

That situation is being remedied by the Mount Pleasant Historical Society, which is now launching a program to appeal to the townsfolk to lend their vintage photographs to the society long enough to be scanned and included in a photographic searchable index to be made available to area libraries as a reference tool. So, precious reader, thanks for lending your support to that project by your interest in this book, the seed from which the project grew. If you have vintage Mount Pleasant photographs, electronic or hard copy, please contact me at [e-mail].

Mount Pleasant rests in the palm of the Michigan mitten, 17 miles northwest of the geographical center of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, at the crossroads of U.S. Route 127 and Michigan Route M-20. The Chippewa River runs through it, bisecting the town on its way to confluence with the Tittabawasee River and ultimately the Saginaw River and Saginaw Bay. Near downtown, the river splits and rejoins itself, forming Island Park, which with Nelson, Millpond, and Chipp-A-Waters Parks forms a green corridor along the river through the southwestern third of the