A history of Dunkirk,
since 1880
Postcards, papers and photographs of Dunkirk from public archives, woven together by decade. Neighbors fill in the gaps.
The story
from WikipediaRead it all ↗The Iroquoian languages-speaking Erie people occupied this area of the forested lakefront along the southern shore of Lake Erie well into the 1600s, when Europeans, mostly French, started trading around the Great Lakes. They were pushed out by the Seneca people, one of the Five Nations of the powerful Haudenosaunee Confederacy, based here and further east in New York.
The European-American demarcation and settlement of Chadwick Bay began in 1826. and later the town was named after Dunkirk in France
The Dunkirk Lighthouse at Point Gratiot was built soon after and still stands. Dunkirk served as a minor railroad hub and steamship port on Lake Erie into the early 1900s. Both freight and passenger ships traveled the lakes.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Timeline
built from the dates on the items belowFinish Dunkirk’s story
Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
0 of 10 decades since 1900 have photos 🔁Retake an old viewDunkirk (Village); Dunkirk Busine…, 1867: stand where they stood+15 📦Share a family photoSign in to add one+10Famous people from Dunkirk
See all 31 →
Dunkirk, decade by decade
1990s
Then & now
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as Dunkirk (Village); Dunkirk Business Directory (1867) and it appears here side by side.
🔁 Retake this view · +15Stories next door
nearby towns’ historyFrom Wikimedia Commons (6). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.