Wyoming is a city in Kent County in the U.S. state of Michigan. The population was 76,501 at the 2020 census. Part of the Grand Rapids metropolitan area, Wyoming is bordered by Grand Rapids to the northeast and, after Grand Rapids, it is the second most-populous city in West Michigan.
European-Americans settled the area in 1832 along Buck Creek, and it was organized as Wyoming Township in 1848 after separating from Byron Township. Through the 19th and early 20th centuries, Wyoming remained a rural area providing goods to Grand Rapids, until the Grand Rapids, Holland and Chicago Railway spurred suburbanization. After Grandville was incorporated in 1933 and the General Motors Stamping Division Plant opened, Wyoming faced annexation disputes with Grand Rapids and Grandville until incorporating as a city in 1959.
As a city, Wyoming became a regional retail and entertainment hub on the 28th Street corridor with the opening of Rogers Plaza and Studio 28. Development declined in the 1980s. Growth then shifted to Wyoming's southwest near RiverTown Crossings and later around Metro Health Hospital after 2007, though the GM plant closed in 2009. Since the mid-2010s, the city has focused on redeveloping 28th Street through the City Center project and repurposing the 74-acre former GM property, now called Site 36.
History
Native American settlements
Native Americans of the Hopewellian culture inhabited the region from ca. 400 B.C. to A.D. 400. Classified as the Goodall focus, a Hopewell sub-grouping, they created a series of structures known as Norton Mound group with the mounds probably being constructed in the first century AD. Odawa tribes were established in the area near present-day Wyoming, with the village of the ogema Black Skin, natively known as Muck-i-ta-oska or Mukatasha, ranging from the southwest present-day Grand Rapids to the Grand River across from the Norton Mound group, with the mouth of the Black Skin Creek leading into the Grand River across from the mounds. Where what is now Grandville, Michigan, a prairie existed west of Wyoming where up to ten native families under the ogema As-to-quet, who were friendly with early settlers in the area, held planting grounds.
Little Prairie settlement In the late 1700s, French fur traders traversed the Grand River Valley. Lucius Lyon, a Yankee Protestant, was contracted by the federal government to survey the Grand River Valley in the fall of 1830 and in the first quarter of 1831, the federal survey of the Northwest Territory reached the Grand River, setting the boundaries for Kent County, named after prominent New York jurist James Kent. Lyon would also survey "Township Nº VI West, Range Nº XII North", which would become Wyoming. The area that is now the city of Wyoming was the second location settled by European-Americans in Kent County. Robert Howlett, Luther Lincoln, Amos Gordon and Stephen Tucker were some of the first settlers in the fall of 1832. Gordon left Wayne County, Michigan to arrive at the mission in Grand Rapids to build the first mill at Indian Mill Creek, later leading a scouting group of Howlett, Lincoln and Tucker in birch canoes down the Grand River in the summer of 1832. The group found Buck Creek emptying into the Grand, determining the creek was strong enough for a mill, with many of Wyoming's first settlers establishing themselves near the creek.
Lincoln built the first log shanty in the area in the fall of 1832 and began to prepare his plot with livestock and crops before the winter. Lincoln and Tucker would stay at the mission through the winter; Tucker and Native Americans later constructed the first established house for his family in March 1833. Lincoln's cabin, however, was built in close proximity to the Norton Mounds and was likely burned down by Odawa natives according to settler Roswell Britton. The first settlers had a successful harvest, constructing gristmills and sawmills on Buck Creek in a year in 1833 and by April 1834, a community called "Little Prairie" had been established. On May 24, 1834, the first post office was established at Little Prairie. In 1835, competing lumber mills on Buck Creek that supplied wood to Chicago – one owned by Albert and John Bull and the other by Nathanial Brown – starved the water flow to Gordon's mill, resulting with Gordon building a new mill on what is now the southwest corner of 44th Street and Burlingame Avenue. Through the 1800s, Wyoming would primarily remain an agricultural location and its development occurred near transportation routes in the region.
Byron Township (1836–1848) The boundaries of Township 5 North, Range 12 West and Township 6 North, Range 12 West, surveyed by Lyon, were consolidated and designated to be organized as Byron Township in 1835 by the Michigan Territorial Legislature. In late 1835, the first wedding occurred between Sylvester Hills and Harriet Burton. The town was first organized as Byron Township on May 2, 1836, was called "Oakesville" as it was headquartered at the home of Charles H. Oakes, though when Oakes moved to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the name was changed to Grandville. It was this year that one of Wyoming's most notable pioneers, Justus Charles Rogers, established his homestead on what is now the southwest corner of 28th Street and Clyde Park Avenue. A framed house was constructed by Rogers in the spring of 1836 and was expected to accept his wife upon their return, though the home was discovered destroyed by a tornado in September 1836 when they returned.
The following year in 1837, the launch of the pole boat propelled by a quant, the Cinderella, was celebrated as a major development for the town. The first floor of what would become Rogers Mansion was then constructed in 1837, with the second floor being finished in 1839. For three weeks, settlers had to live without flour and late in the year, the first metal casting occurred at the Jame McCray foundry. In 1839, the township's final land patents south of the Grand River were issued for plots near the salt springs adjacent to the Norton Mounds and Section 16. Plaster Creek first powered plaster operations in the township in 1841 on land leased by Daniel Ball from De Garmo Jones. In May 1843, Gordon died in Plainfield Township, Michigan.
Wyoming Township (1848–1959) On April 3, 1848, the township of Byron divided in half, with the name of Wyoming being used for the northern portion where the majority of the population was settled, with many settling near Buck Creek. At the time of division, about 500 people lived in Wyoming while fewer than 200 lived in Byron. The name came from the Wyoming County, New York, from which the majority of the residents came during the first 16 years. During the Great Famine in Ireland, Irish immigrants began to appear in Wyoming in 1849, with the Whalen family being among the first Irish families in the township. Michael Avenue is named after Michael Whalen. Dutch immigrants arrived in greater numbers and created agricultural cooperatives on smaller parcels of land, creating closed groups among themselves. In 1850, the population of Wyoming Township was counted at 543 people. At the time, Dutch and Irish immigrants were scapegoated for the prevalence of "Michigan ague", or malaria, which had begun affecting the area.
Fisher's Station
David Fisher arrived in Wyoming in 1857 and acquired land from Gordon's estate, replacing Gordon's old Buck Creek mill, which had burned down, and built a replacement. Fisher would then construct cabins along the west side of Burlingame Avenue which housed Fisher and the millers he employed. Operations for Fisher would expand further south on Buck Creek where he would extract lime and peat, later building a second mill on a plot of land he purchased from William Ferry in the southeast portion of the township. In 1869, a station on the Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad was constructed, and in 1870, Fisher had a town platted called "Fisher's Station," which would develop around the railroad station. A post office was constructed in 1871 and the area was platted in December 1873.Walter Romig, Michigan Place Names, p. 198 The population of Wyoming Township grew to 2,008 in 1874 while the population of Fisher's Station was 65 in 1888. Fisher, along with his brother and business partner, James, would retire in Grand Rapids and lived as wealthy men for the rest of their lives. During the township's early history, the then rural community would often produce agricultural goods and farmers would travel to Grand Rapids to sell their products.
Suburban growth Gypsum mines in northeast Wyoming along Plaster Creek operated for decades and became more refined in 1880 when the Alabastine Company acquired much of the gypsum, later opening the Alabastine Mine in 1907. Wyoming Township began to grow as a suburb of Grand Rapids in 1890 with its next major area of development occurring in the northeast section of the township closest to Grand Rapids with much of the city's population moving southward in the early 1900s. The City of Grand Rapids started annexing portions of the township and by 1891 had annexed one square mile () of the city from Division to Clyde Park and from Hall to Burton. In 1902, the Grand Rapids, Holland and Chicago Railway promoted the creation of more plats in the Galewood, Urbandale, and Burlingame (GUB) neighborhoods, with the railway providing transportation to downtown Grand Rapids in fifteen minutes. From 1890 to 1906, thirty-two plats were in the GUB neighborhoods with communities bordering Grand Rapids developing into suburban areas where Dutch Americans predominately resided. In the GUB area, the Christian Reformed Church expanded with its Dutch churchgoers. Another section of Wyoming was annexed by Grand Rapids in 1916 that involved the half-mile from Burton to Alger and from Clyde Park to Division.
The growth of Wyoming saw the emergence of profitable businesses there, including the Leonard Refrigerator Company, the Pierre Marquette railroad car repair shop and gypsum mines. Gravel pits operated by Grand Rapids Gravel Company lined the western side of present-day Byron Center Avenue from 28th Street (then Beales Road) in the south to the north near Lamar Park – its nearby lakes being former pits – also provided jobs and gravel for roads in the expanding township. With the United States entering World War I, the federal government began construction of a picric acid factory on the west side of 44th Street and Clyde Park Avenue, employing thousands of people in the area and attracting others after rumors of an airplane factory on the site were spread, though construction would end following the Armistice of 11 November 1918. In the late 1910s and early 1920s in the GUB neighborhood, Hackett and later Lorraine automobiles were manufactured at a factory on Beverly and Burlingame Avenues.