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A "…modern day explorers are repeating a centuries-old ritual performed by countless Indians and scores of fur-seeking Frenchmen as well as other European settlers following the smoothest path to the big lake to the west."

"This land at the confluence of the Grand and a smaller river once called simply the Cedar was just a passing forest scene for Indians, explorers, fur trappers, surveyors and early pioneers. Except for the occasional native encampment, Indians or white men did not stop to set up homes, farms, or shops in the area of the Big Bend until the mid-1830's."

Historians describe the area as forbidding because of its thick forest and marshland. Ironically, it was this slight that led to the Big Bend area's election as the Capital in the forest in 1847." There is no record when the first French explorers or trappers traveled the Grand River past Lansing. White European and Indian Blood flowed in battles in Detroit, Monroe and Mackinac, (early in the 19th Century), however, the Grand and Cedar Rivers flowed untainted."

Because of the swampy and forested land in this area, other parts of Mid-Michigan were open to settlers in the early years of the 1800s. Both Eaton and Clinton Counties were being homesteaded. Pioneer families, wagons loaded with their entire life's belongings and pulled by either horse or oxen, found traveling northwest from Detroit was extremely difficult and consumed weeks of their time. The trails cleared for travel had destinations in southern Ingham County, or Clinton County in mind. However, once Lansing was designated the new state capital of Michigan, things began to change.

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