Arts & Entertainment

Book reveals history of Detroit’s forgotten streetcars

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By IAN WENDROW
Capital News Service
LANSING — Detroit once was home to the world’s largest municipally owned streetcar enterprise, an industry with a history stretching from the city’s early founding through the 1950s. Now a new book, “The Thirty-Year War: The History of Detroit Streetcars, 1892-1922” by Neil Lehto, provides an in-depth look at the origins and development of that public transportation system. Lehto is an attorney representing Michigan townships and villages in cases involving public utilities, with a focus on telecommunications. Before he was a lawyer, Lehto cut his teeth working for a Royal Oak newspaper while attending Wayne State University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism. The combination of municipal law and journalism fueled his desire to write the book.

Parks & Recreation

Colonial cannons from Detroit River help solve historical mysteries

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By ERIC FREEDMAN
Capital News Service
LANSING – The latest research about six 19th century British cannons recovered from the Detroit River is shedding new light on colonial-era militarization of the Great Lakes region, from the Straits of Mackinac to Indiana. It’s also an opportunity to solve at least three mysteries that date to when Detroit still belonged to the British, even after the American Revolution. In 1984, divers recovered the first cannon from a ridge called “Chicken Bone Reef” in the Detroit River just offshore from Cobo Hall. Others were found in 1984 and 1987. A Detroit police diving team discovered the sixth during a 2011 training exercise in the same location.