GRAND RAPIDS, MI - Louis Campau wasn’t the first white tradesman to discover the land along the Grand River, but he was one of the first to stay. The fur trader’s legacy in Grand Rapids is clear today, with several streets and landmarks named after him.

Campau came to Grand Rapids from Saginaw in 1826 to set up a trading post, a decade before the title to the land north and east of the site had passed from the Anishinaabek, according to the Grand Rapids Public Library archives.

It was not long after Campau settled at the rapids that he realized the site would someday be the home to a bustling metropolis.

“To single out any individual as the founder of Grand Rapids would, indeed, be difficult,” as stated in a 1963 biography of Campau by Herbert V. Book. “It took a variety of talents to f

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