St. Joseph, Michigan

Saint Joseph, colloquially known as Saint Joe, is a city in and the county seat of Berrien County, Michigan. It was incorporated as a village in 1834 and as a city in 1891. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 7,856. It lies on the shore of Lake Michigan, at the mouth of the St. Joseph River, about 90 miles (140 km) east-northeast of Chicago. The city and adjacent Benton Harbor are known as the "Twin Cities".

The mouth of the Saint Joseph River at present day Saint Joseph was an important point of Miami and Potawatomi travel and commerce, as it lay along a key water route between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. Both the Miami and Potawatomi used this route and would use the area as a camp. The St. Joseph River also allowed for connection with the Sauk Trail, which was the major land trail through Michigan. In 1669, the mouth of the river was seen by European explorers. French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, built Fort Miami on the bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. In 1678, he waited for the ship Le Griffon, which never returned. Once the ship was deemed lost, La Salle and his men made the first land crossing of the lower peninsula by Europeans.

The next permanent white settler in Saint Joseph was William Burnett, who around 1780 started a trading post at the mouth of the Saint Joseph River. The post traded food, furs and goods with places including Detroit, Mackinac and Chicago. In 1829, Calvin Britain, who had come from Jefferson County, New York, and had taught at the Carey Mission at Niles for two years, came to the site of Saint Joseph. Shortly thereafter, he laid out the plat of the village, then known as Newburyport, named after a coastal city in Massachusetts. Britain was influential in attracting other settlers to the area. Lots sold rapidly and the village flourished.

The Saint Joseph river mouth was straightened through a channel and piers were added later. The first lighthouse in Saint Joseph contends with Chicago's original lighthouse as the first to be built on Lake Michigan. Newburyport changed its name to St. Joseph when it was incorporated on March 7, 1834. The city was incorporated June 5, 1891.

The first water route across Lake Michigan between Saint Joseph and Chicago began as a mail route in 1825, but service was sporadic until 1842 when Samuel and Eber Ward began a permanent service. That lasted eleven years. Before the rise of large ship companies on Lake Michigan, service was done primarily by owner-operated boats. With the rise in shipping in Benton Harbor and the rise in tourism in Saint Joseph, permanent and larger operations began operating out of the ports.

The Coast Guard still maintains a station on this site. In 1876 the United States Lifesaving Service built a Lifesaving Station at Saint Joseph, appointing Joseph Napier as the first stationkeeper.

After a bitterly fought political contest, Saint Joseph was named the seat of Berrien County in 1894, when Berrien Springs relinquished that status. The three largest towns in the county, Benton Harbor, Saint Joseph, and Niles, each wanted to be the county seat, but none had a majority vote. Once St. Joseph and Benton Harbor voters combined their votes, St. Joseph had enough to win.

On October 11, 1898, Augustus Moore Herring took one of his gliders, fitted with a motor, to Silver Beach in Saint Joseph. Herring's machine lifted ever so slightly off the ground and actually flew for seven seconds. Eleven days later, the inventor made another flight of ten seconds. While Herring had a powered heavier-than-air craft, he did not have a way to control it. It was left to the Wright brothers to perfect controlled flight five years later, and give themselves and Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, a place in history that might have ended up belonging to Herring and Saint Joseph.