A hundred men land on the Detroit River and start cutting white oak

By 1701, France held vast territory in North America but few footholds strong enough to control it. On July 24, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac landed on the north bank of the Detroit River with about 100 men who had traveled from Montreal, and broke ground on a fort at the narrow strait linking Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair. He named it Fort Pontchartrain, for the French naval minister Louis Phélypeaux, comte de Pontchartrain. The post anchored French trade in the Great Lakes for decades and grew into the city of Detroit…