Ribbon farms along the Detroit and Rouge Rivers
In 1776 the Potawatomi deeded roughly 4,000 acres — including all of present-day Lincoln Park — to Pierre St. Cosme. His family later sold parcels to French farmers from Detroit and Windsor, who laid out long, narrow farms fronting the Detroit and Rouge Rivers and running back several miles into the forest. The area took the name Lincoln Park in 1906, incorporated as a village in 1921, and became a city in 1925 as Ford's $5-a-day wage (begun in 1914) drew Rouge-plant workers to buy property here; a second expansion followed World War II.
What a ribbon-farm legacy means for a deck layout
Where a block still follows one of those original narrow French ribbon-farm footprints, the yard tends to run long and deep rather than wide — a deck there often extends back along the length of the property rather than spanning its width, unlike the squarer postwar lots that arrived after WWII on other parts of the city.
Deck project paths in Lincoln Park
Prepare a Lincoln Park inquiry
Let us know whether your lot backs onto the river along one of the old ribbon-farm footprints or sits in a squarer postwar subdivision — it changes whether a deck design should run long and narrow or wide and shallow.
Downriver building conditions
Lincoln Park's river-fronting lots sit on the same clay-heavy, high-water-table ground as the rest of the corridor, especially relevant on the blocks closest to the water.