Masquigon, photo by Rudy Malmquist

Wikipedia’s Muskegon entry explains that:

“Muskegon” is derived from the Ottawa Indian term “Masquigon” meaning “marshy river or swamp”. The “Masquigon” river was identified on French maps dating from the late seventeenth century, suggesting that French explorers had reached Michigan’s western coast by that time.

Father Jacques Marquette traveled northward through the area on his fateful trip to St. Ignace in 1675 and a party of French soldiers under La Salle’s lieutenant, Henry de Tonty, passed through the area in 1679.

The earliest known Euro-American resident of the county was Edward Fitzgerald, a fur trader and trapper who first came to the Muskegon area in 1748 and who died here, reportedly being buried in the vicinity of White Lake. Sometime between 1790 and 1800, a French-Canadian trader named Joseph La Framboise established a fur trading post at the mouth of Duck Lake. Between 1810 and 1820, several French Canadian fur traders, including Lamar Andie, Jean Baptiste Recollect, and Pierre Constant had established fur trading posts around Muskegon Lake. In 1830 Muskegon was an Ottawa village.

Euro-American settlement of Muskegon began in earnest in 1837, which coincided with the beginning of the exploitation of the area’s extensive timber resources. The commencement of the lumber industry in 1837 inaugurated what some regard as the most romantic era in the history of the region.

Read on at Wikipedia.

Check this photo out background bigtacular and see more in Rudy’s Neutral Density slideshow. While we’re at Wikipedia…

In photography and optics, a neutral density filter or ND filter is a filter that reduces and/or modifies intensity of all wavelengths or colors of light equally, giving no changes in hue of color rendition. It can be a colorless (clear) or grey filter. The purpose of a standard photographic neutral density filter is to allow the photographer greater flexibility to change the aperture, exposure time and/or motion blur of subject in different situations and atmospheric conditions.

History? Yes, Michigan in Pictures has lots and lots of Michigan history … and a fair bit on Muskegon too!