he landed at what is now recognized as the city of Detroit (French for “de troit” meaning “the strait”). Cadillac and his accompanying settlers and soldiers began building Fort Pontchartrain and developed the Fort and its surrounding land. As the Detroit settlement began to expand, it did so along the rivers, north and south, along the Detroit River and the Rouge River (French for “red river”). The descendants of Cadillac and those who first accompanied him became a large part of the population that made up the area that was to become River Rouge.The specific location of Detroit and the later developed River Rouge was so advantageous as it was situated between the iron ore of the upper peninsula and the coal mines in the eastern American states.With such accessibility to these raw materials, the development of manufacturing was surely inevitable, thus making manufacturing inseparable from the history of the City of River Rouge.

Before the area transitioned from farmland to a factory-sustaining city, it passed through several stages of growth. What was once a footpath that traveled along the Detroit River became part of the oldest highway in Wayne County. First coined “River Road,” today River Rouge citizens know this as West Jefferson Avenue. Less than a miles south of the Rouge River, “Dearborn Road,” a military highway that lead to an early arsenal for the United States, intersected with “River Road.” The old “Dearborn Road” was later renamed Schaefer Highway, which is known as Coolidge Highway within the proper limits of River Rouge.

As the