DETROIT (Michigan News Source) – On this day in Michigan history, 222 years ago, a charter was approved that incorporated Detroit as Michigan’s first official city.

The act of incorporation was passed by the legislative council and territorial governor of the Northwest Territory. The group met in Chillicothe, Ohio, and passed the act on Jan. 18, 1802, according to the Detroit Historical Society.

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Michigan did not officially become a state until Jan. 26, 1837. Its constitution contained the provision that “the seat of government for this state shall be at Detroit, or at such other place or places as may be prescribed by law until the year eighteen hundred and forty-seven, when it shall be permanently located by the legislature.”

When the time came to make a final decision on where the legislature would meet, four primary arguments were made against retaining Detroit as the state’s capital. These, according to the Michigan Senate, included:

• Making the capital more defensible by moving it further from the Canadian border;
• Encouraging inland settlements;
• Making the capital accessible to those who lived inland; and
• Boosting the interior economy.

Ann Arbor, Jackson, Detroit, and Grand Rapids were the primary candidates for the permanent capital until Joseph H. Kilbourne of Ingham County proposed Lansing — “a hole in the woods” that most of the legislators had never heard of. The site was chosen as a compromise between competing cities, and Lansing was renamed the “Town of Michigan.”

Meanwhile, the city of Detroit continued to expand along a geometric street pattern designed to mimic the grand boulevards of Paris, earning the city the nickname “Paris of the West” and establishing it as a major transportation hub along the Great Lakes.