Saginaw
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a city of Michigan, the county-seat of Saginaw co. It is on the Saginaw river, and on the Grand Trunk, the Michigan Central, and Père Marquette railroads. The river here is spanned by 11 bridges, 4 of which are railroad and 7 public bridges. The city has an excellent street system and most of the important roadways are paved with asphalt and brick. There is an extensive park system including Hoyt, Linton, Ezra Rust, and Bliss parks. The city also contains two excellent libraries, the Hoyt Library and the Public Library. It is the seat of the Michigan Institute for the Blind, the Old Folks' Home, and the Germania Institute. Its educational institutions include a free manual training school given to the city by Hon. W. R. Burt. There is also a trade school, the gift of Hon. Arthur Hill. Other notable buildings include three Masonic temples, a court house, city hall, and two hospitals. Also an Elks temple, temple, Y. M. C. A. and Y. W. C. A. buildings, and a post-office. During the lumber era of Michigan, Saginaw was one of the chief scenes of the lumber trade. The lumbering industry is still important. Within recent years extensive beds of bituminous coal have been discovered in the neighborhood of the city, and over 2,000,000 tons are mined annually. The beet sugar industry is an important one in the surrounding country. Among the other leading industries are the manufacture of glass, lumber, salt, and many other products. The city has an important wholesale trade with the surrounding country. Pop. (1910) 50,510; (1920) 61,903.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Collier's wrote this in 1921 Saginaw had just passed 61,903 people and was riding coal, salt, lumber and beet sugar; over 2,000,000 tons of coal a year, it reported, came from beds near the city. All of that went: Michigan's bituminous mines were finished by mid-century, the lumber era was already a memory, and the twentieth-century city instead lived on General Motors, whose Saginaw Steering Gear and grey-iron foundry works employed tens of thousands before the plant closures and spin-offs of the 1980s onward. Population peaked near 98,000 around 1960 and has since fallen to roughly 44,000, less than in 1921, leaving Saginaw one of the more heavily studied cases of Rust Belt shrinkage. Sugar beets are the survivor: the crop still dominates the surrounding Saginaw Valley farmland, and Hoyt Library and the parks named for Hoyt, Rust and Bliss are still in use.
Written for this edition, 2026.