A history of Allegan,
since 1833
Postcards, papers and photographs of Allegan from public archives, woven together by decade. Neighbors fill in the gaps.
The story
from WikipediaRead it all ↗The men after whom Allegan's downtown streets were named – Elisha Ely, Samuel Hubbard, Charles Christopher Trowbridge, Pliny Cutler, and Edmund Monroe – patented land in the area in 1833. They considered the site a prime location for industry, due to its potential for water power (since it straddled the Kalamazoo River) and water bound transportation. By 1835, a dam and sawmill had been established.
Allegan was named in a neologism by Michigan historian Henry Rowe Schoolcraft in 1837 to sound like a Native American word. Land was purchased from government to form the downtown business district; village organization came in 1838 with city incorporation authorized in 1907.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Timeline
built from the dates on the items belowFinish Allegan’s story
Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
2 of 10 decades since 1900 have photos 🔁Retake an old viewDAR (1917) - Hannah McIntosh Cady…, 1918: stand where they stood+15 📦Share a family photoSign in to add one+10Famous people from Allegan
See all 14 →
Allegan, decade by decade
1990s
Then & now
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as DAR (1917) - Hannah McIntosh Cady Chapter (1918) and it appears here side by side.
🔁 Retake this view · +15
From Wikimedia Commons (2), the Library of Congress (3) and the National Register (7). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.