Before founding as Ann Arbor The region was once inhabited by several
Native American tribes, the most prominent being the
Anishinaabe people of the Three Fires: the
Odawa,
Ojibwe, and
Potawatomi. The Potawatomi founded two villages in the area of what is now Ann Arbor in about 1774. Other tribes that inhabited the area included the
Wyandots and
Sauk. These peoples established several trails that converged on present-day Ann Arbor. The land that included Washtenaw County was ceded to the U.S. by the Odawa, Ojibwe, Potawatomi, and Wyandot in the
Treaty of Detroit of 1807.
19th century Ann Arbor was founded in 1824 by land speculators
John Allen and
Elisha Walker Rumsey. On May 25, 1824, the town
plat was registered with
Wayne County as the Village of Annarbour, the earliest known use of the town's name. Allen and Rumsey decided to name it for their wives, both named Ann, and for the stands of
bur oak in the of land they purchased for $800 () from the federal government at $1.25 per acre. The local
Ojibwa named the settlement , after the sound of Allen's
sawmill. Ann Arbor became the seat of Washtenaw County in 1827 and was incorporated as a village in 1833. The Ann Arbor Land Company, a group of speculators, set aside of undeveloped land and offered it to the state of Michigan as the site of the state capitol, but lost the bid to
Lansing. In 1837, the property was accepted instead as the site of the
University of Michigan. at the
Ann Arbor station in 1892, with a crowd that included Mayor
William Doty and University President
James B. Angell|alt=A black-and-white photograph of a crowd of men are standing in a semi-circle around
Grover Cleveland. A train car is visible in the top-left corner of the photograph. Since the university's establishment in the city in 1837, the histories of the University of Michigan and Ann Arbor have been closely linked. The town became a regional transportation hub in 1839 with the arrival of the
Michigan Central Railroad, and a north–south railway connecting Ann Arbor to
Toledo and other markets to the south was established in 1878. Throughout the 1840s and the 1850s settlers continued to come to Ann Arbor. While the earlier settlers were primarily of British ancestry, the newer settlers also consisted of Germans, Irish, and Black people. In 1851, Ann Arbor was chartered as a city, though the city showed a drop in population during the
Depression of 1873. with new immigrants from Greece, Italy, Russia, and Poland.
20th century Ann Arbor saw increased growth in manufacturing, especially in
milling. Following a 1956 vote, the city of East Ann Arbor merged with Ann Arbor to encompass the eastern sections of the city. In 1960, Ann Arbor voters approved a $2.3 million
bond issue (equivalent to $ million in ) to build the current city hall, which was designed by architect
Alden B. Dow. The City Hall opened in 1963. In 1995, the building was renamed the Guy C. Larcom Jr. Municipal Building in honor of the longtime city administrator who championed the building's construction. During the 1960s and 1970s, the city gained a reputation as an important center for
liberalism (liberal politics), and a locus for
left-wing activism,
anti-Vietnam War activism, and
student activism. The first major meetings of the national left-wing campus group
Students for a Democratic Society occurred in Ann Arbor in 1960; in 1965, the city was home to the first U.S.
teach-in against the
Vietnam War. During the ensuing 15 years, many
countercultural and
New Left enterprises sprang up and developed large constituencies within the city. These influences washed into municipal politics during the early and mid-1970s when three members of the
Human Rights Party (HRP) won city council seats on the strength of the student vote. During their time on the council, HRP representatives fought for measures including pioneering
antidiscrimination ordinances,
measures decriminalizing marijuana possession, and a
rent-control ordinance. in 1975|alt=A photograph of a train and several tracks of railroad in front of the Ann Arbor station. Two religious-conservative institutions were created in Ann Arbor; the
Word of God (established in 1967), a
charismatic inter-denominational movement; Since 1998, Ann Arbor is also the home office of the
Anthroposophical Society in the United States, an organization dedicated to supporting the community of those interested in the inner path of schooling known as
anthroposophy, developed by
Rudolf Steiner. From 1967 to its closing in 1990, Ann Arbor hosted
KMS Fusion, the world's first company to pursue
fusion power via the
inertial confinement fusion method.
21st century In the past several decades, Ann Arbor has grappled with the effects of sharply rising land values,
gentrification, and
urban sprawl stretching into outlying countryside. On November 4, 2003, voters approved a
greenbelt plan under which the city government bought development rights on agricultural parcels of land adjacent to Ann Arbor to preserve them from sprawling development. Since then, a vociferous local debate has hinged on how and whether to accommodate and guide development within city limits. Ann Arbor consistently ranks in the "top places to live" lists published by various mainstream media outlets every year. 's headquarters on Eisenhower Parkway in Ann Arbor|alt=See caption In 2016, the city changed mayoral terms from two years to four. In 2020, partly as a response to the
COVID-19 pandemic, the city government opened several downtown streets to pedestrians, limiting their use by motor vehicles to
emergency vehicles during summertime weekends. In addition to providing a large
pedestrian mall, these changes allow restaurants to use more of the sidewalks and part of the street for outdoor seating. These changes were popular enough that in 2021 the city council extended the dates from March to November, continuing the schedule of cordoning off cars from Thursday evening until Monday morning. ==Geography==