What we imagine South Lyon looked like in the past?

Sit back and close your eyes and see a "dirt" Pontiac Trail and while going down that country road all you can see is farm land and woods until it touched the clouds in the background. That is how I see Lyon township and South Lyon back then, even in the 1950's when my family moved to Lyon Twp/New Hudson they told me stories of how South Lyon was just the four corners and nothing but woods and fields surrounding it. How have we grown since then, oh how have we grown. Now when you come down the "Paved" Pontiac Trail you see shops and schools and everything else between. South Lyon's main road has changed a lot over the years. Where Larry Foodland is now, that used to be the sledding hill for South Lyon before McHattie Park sledding hill was a twinkle in the town's eye. The depot use to be on Ten mile/Lake St. before moving to the historical village on Dorothy St. that is off of Pontiac Trail. Then there is the South Lyon Hotel and the center of downtown. Which in reality has not change that much at all. That is South Lyon, ever changing but not really underneath. Buildings and people will always come and go, but South Lyon will be here forever though the history that has been told.

What did happen this day in South Lyon?

What does this picture tell us of a day in the history of South Lyon? I mean I know that it is 1908-1909 by the fact that the place being built is the witch's hat depot. But what else could this old picture tell us? I mean who are the men that are building it and why did they want to build that kind of depot? Did they know that one year, 100 years from the day that they stood in that spot taking that picture, there project would be South Lyon's "Trademark Landmark"? These are the questions that history poses to us. This is what a historian wants to do, find as many answers as possible to those questions. Try being the historian and tell me what you think the answers to those questions are.

The beginning of a hometown

In 1834 the settlement of Thompsons Corner wanted to become known though out the state of Michigan, therefore naming themselves South Lyon after being in the Southern corner of the township of Lyon. Then in 1873 after the railroad had been in placed and the population had increased they became establish as a village. Finally in 1930 the town of South Lyon became a city and started becoming the city that it is today. People have always been drawn to this place of farmland and open country, that has a closeness of Ann Arbor and Detroit. Over the years South Lyon has seen buildings built and fall and also people come and go. In this Journal I am going to tell the history and stories that I know about the town of South Lyon and the Area surrounding it. This is the South Lyon history Journal.