PORT HURON, a city of south-eastern Michigan, U.S.A., 6o m. N.N.E. of Detroit, at the lower end of Lake Huron, on the St. Clair river at the mouth of the Black, and opposite Sarnia (Ontario), with which it is connected by a railway tunnel 6,025 ft. long; a port of entry and the county seat of Saint Clair county. It is on Federal highway 25, and is served by the Grand Trunk, the Pere Marquette and electric railways, motor coach and truck lines, and lake and river steamers. The population was 25,944 in 1920, 24% foreign-born white, and was 31,361 in 1930 by the Federal census. Port Huron is the metropolis of the great summer resort region known as the Lake Huron Beaches, stretching for Ioo m. along the lake to the north, and of the busy manufacturing district which borders the St. Clair for 3o m. to the south. Its water-borne commerce in 1927 amounted to 941,744 tons, valued at $39,513,607. The city's factories had an output in 1927 valued
at A thick deposit of salt was discovered under the city in 1883, and gas and oil have also been found in the locality. Port Huron is the headquarters of the Women's Benefit asso ciation, which has assets of $30,000,000. In 1686 the French established Ft. St. Joseph within the present limits of Port Huron. It came into the possession of the British in 1761, and in was occupied by American troops and renamed in honour of Gen eral Charles Gratiot (1788-1855). The settlement which grew up around it was organized as a village in 1840, and in 1893 it was annexed to Port Huron. Another settlement (at first called La Riviere de Lude, and after 1828 Desmond) was made near the fort in 1790 by several French families. It was incorporated as the village of Port Huron in 1840 and chartered as a city in