Travel – Dearborn, MI

Dearborn is a city in Wayne County in the U.S. state of Michigan. An inner-ring suburb of Detroit, Dearborn borders Detroit to the north and east, roughly 7 miles (11.3 km) west of downtown Detroit. As of the 2020 census, it had a population of 109,976, ranking as the seventh-most populous city in Michigan. Dearborn is best known as the hometown of the Ford Motor Company and of its founder, Henry Ford.

The first written settlement of Dearborn is from the 18th century by French-Canadian voyageurs who initially called the settlement La Belle Fontaine or Place aux Fontaines because of the abundant springs in the area. Therefore, Dearborn was once named Springwells, an anglicization of the French name.^[4] The settlement was connected to the Detroit River ribbon farm communities and other farms connected to the Rouge River and the Sauk Trail. The community grew in the 19th century with the establishment of the Detroit Arsenal on the Chicago Road linking Detroit and Chicago. During the 20th century, it developed as a major manufacturing hub for the automotive industry.

Henry Ford was born on a farm that was once at the intersection of Ford Road and Greenfield Road. Ford later built his estate, Fair Lane, and his River Rouge Complex, the largest factory of his empire, in Dearborn. He developed the mass production of automobiles, and based the world headquarters of the Ford Motor Company here. The city has a campus of the University of Michigan, and Henry Ford College. The Henry Ford is the largest indoor-outdoor historic museum complex in the United States, and Metro Detroit‘s leading tourist attraction.^[5][6]

Dearborn residents are Americans primarily of European or Middle Eastern ancestry, many descendants of 19th and 20th-century immigrants. The census identifies primary European ethnicities as German, Polish, Irish, and Italian. New waves of immigration came from the Middle East in the late 20th century, mostly Muslims and fewer Christian minorities from Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. Dearborn has the proportionally largest Muslim population in the United States and the largest mosque in North America.^[7][8] In 2023, Dearborn became the first Arab-majority city in the US, with 55% of its residents claiming to be of Middle Eastern or North African ancestry in a 2023 survey.^[9][10]