The Detroit River flows west and south for 24 nautical miles from Lake St. Clair to Lake Erie as a strait in the Great Lakes system. The river divides the metropolitan areas of Detroit, Michigan, and Windsor, Ontario—an area collectively referred to as Detroit–Windsor—and forms part of the border between Canada and the United States. The Ambassador Bridge, the Detroit–Windsor Tunnel, and the Michigan Central Railway Tunnel connect the cities.
Port Huron is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of St. Clair County. The population was 28,983 at the 2020 census. The city is bordered on the west by Port Huron Township, but the two are administered autonomously.
Essex County is a primarily rural county in Southwestern Ontario, Canada comprising seven municipalities: Amherstburg, Kingsville, Lakeshore, LaSalle, Leamington, Tecumseh and the administrative seat, Essex.
Chatham-Kent is a single-tier municipality in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. It is mostly rural, and its population centres are Chatham, Wallaceburg, Tilbury, Blenheim, Ridgetown, Wheatley and Dresden. The current Municipality of Chatham-Kent was created in 1998 by the amalgamation of Blenheim, Bothwell, Camden, the City of Chatham, the Township of Chatham, Dover, Dresden, Erie Beach, Erieau, Harwich, Highgate, Howard, Orford, Raleigh, Ridgetown, Romney, Thamesville, Tilbury East, Tilbury, Wallaceburg, Wheatley and Zone.
Amherstburg is a town near the mouth of the Detroit River in Essex County, Ontario, Canada. In 1796, Fort Malden was established here, stimulating growth in the settlement. The fort has been designated as a National Historic Site.
The St. Clair River is a 40.5-mile-long (65.2 km) river in central North America which flows from Lake Huron into Lake St. Clair, forming part of the international boundary between Canada and the United States and between the Canadian province of Ontario and the U.S. state of Michigan. The river is a significant component in the Great Lakes Waterway, whose shipping channels permit cargo vessels to travel between the upper and lower Great Lakes.
The Grand Trunk Railway was a railway system that operated in the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario and in the American states of Connecticut, Maine, Michigan, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont. The railway was operated from headquarters in Montreal, Quebec, with corporate headquarters in London, United Kingdom. It cost an estimated $160 million to build. The Grand Trunk, its subsidiaries, and the Canadian Government Railways were precursors of today's Canadian National Railway.
Lambton County is a county in Southwestern Ontario, Canada. It is bordered on the north by Lake Huron, which is drained by the St. Clair River, the county's western border and part of the Canada-United States border. To the south is Lake Saint Clair and Chatham-Kent. Lambton County's northeastern border follows the Ausable River and Parkhill Creek north until it reaches Lake Huron at the beach community of Grand Bend. The county seat is in the Town of Plympton-Wyoming.
Lakeshore is a municipality on Lake St. Clair, in Essex County, Ontario, Canada. It was incorporated in 1999 by amalgamating the Town of Belle River with the townships of Maidstone, Rochester, Tilbury North, and Tilbury West. It is the largest and the most populous municipality within Essex County. However, it is part of the Windsor census metropolitan area.
The Thumb is a region and a peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan, so named because the Lower Peninsula is shaped like a mitten. The Thumb area is generally considered to be in the Central Michigan region, east of the Flint area and the Tri-Cities and north of Metro Detroit. The region is also branded as the Blue Water Area.
The Grand Trunk Western Railroad Company was an American subsidiary of the Grand Trunk Railway, later of the Canadian National Railway operating in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. Since a corporate restructuring in 1971, the railroad has been under CN's subsidiary holding company, the Grand Trunk Corporation. Grand Trunk Western's routes are part of CN's Michigan Division. Its primary mainline between Chicago and Port Huron, Michigan serves as a connection between railroad interchanges in Chicago and rail lines in eastern Canada and the Northeastern United States. The railroad's extensive trackage in Detroit and across southern Michigan has made it an essential link for the automotive industry as a hauler of parts and automobiles from manufacturing plants.
The St. Clair Tunnel is the name for two separate rail tunnels which were built under the St. Clair River between Sarnia, Ontario and Port Huron, Michigan. The original, opened in 1891 and used until it was replaced by a new larger tunnel in 1995, was the first full-size subaqueous tunnel built in North America. It is a National Historic Landmark of the United States, and has been designated a civil engineering landmark by both US and Canadian engineering bodies.
Southwestern Ontario is a secondary region of Southern Ontario in the Canadian province of Ontario. It occupies most of the Ontario Peninsula bounded by Lake Huron, including Georgian Bay, to the north and northwest; the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair, and Detroit River, to the west; and Lake Erie to the south. To the east, on land, Southwestern Ontario is bounded by Central Ontario and the Golden Horseshoe.
Port Lambton is an unincorporated community in St. Clair Township, Lambton County, Ontario, Canada. According to the latest census, 1084 people live within this community.
The Sombra – Marine City (Bluewater) Ferry was a ferry service that crossed the St. Clair River, connecting Sombra, Ontario in Canada on the eastern bank with Marine City, Michigan in the United States on the western bank.
The St. Clair Parkway, historically referred to as the River Road, is a scenic parkway in the Canadian province of Ontario. It travels alongside the St. Clair River from west of Wallaceburg to Sarnia, a distance of 41.8 kilometres (26.0 mi). It formed a portion of the route of Highway 40 until it was bypassed by an inland route that opened in the mid-1970s. The St. Clair River Parkway Commission maintained the route from 1966 until 2006, when it was disbanded and responsibility over the parkway transferred to Chatham-Kent and Lambton County, both of which designate the route as County Road 33. The communities of Port Lambton, Sombra, Courtright, Mooretown, Corunna and Froomfield are located along the parkway, all early settlements of the 19th century.
King's Highway 40, commonly referred to as Highway 40, is a provincially maintained highway in the southwestern portion of the Canadian province of Ontario. The 91.4-kilometre (56.8 mi) route links Chatham and Sarnia via Wallaceburg, following close to the St. Clair River. The southern terminus is at Highway 401 south of Chatham, while the northern terminus is at Highway 402 in Sarnia. The portion of Highway 40 between Highway 401 and north of Wallaceburg is within the municipality of Chatham-Kent, while the portion north of there is within Lambton County.
Rum-running in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, was a major activity in the early part of the 20th century. In 1916, the State of Michigan, in the United States, banned the sale of alcohol, three years before prohibition became the national law in 1919. From that point forward, the City of Windsor, Ontario was a major site for alcohol smuggling and gang activity.
Due to its unique geography, being made of two peninsulas surrounded by the Great Lakes, Michigan has depended on many ferries for connections to transport people, vehicles and trade. The most famous modern ferries are those which carry people and goods across the Straits of Mackinac to the car-free Mackinac Island but before the Mackinac Bridge was built, large numbers of ferries carried people and cars between the two peninsulas. Other ferries continue to provide transportation to small islands and across the Detroit River to Canada. Ferries once provided transport to island parks for city dwellers. The state's only national park, Isle Royale cannot be reached by road and is normally accessed by ferry. The largest ferries in Michigan are the car ferries which cross Lake Michigan to Wisconsin. One of these, the SS Badger is one of the last remaining coal steamers on the Great Lakes and serves as a section of US Highway 10 (US 10). The Badger is also the largest ferry in Michigan, capable of carrying 600 passengers and 180 autos.
Lucie "Ruthie" Blackburn (1803–1895) was a self-emancipated West-Indian, American former slave who escaped to Canada with her husband Thornton Blackburn and helped him establish the first taxi company in Toronto.
