Banks and Loan Bay City has five banking institutions with an aggregate capital of $950,000 and a surplus of $755,000. In 1915 the undivided profits were $183,313, and the deposits amounted to $10,290,929. There are two building loan associations; the Mutual Building and Loan Association of Bay County (capital $2,000,000) and the Savings, Building and Loan Association of Bay County, capital $1,000,000).
Education, Religion, etc.— There are two high schools in the city and nine other school buildings, employing a superintendent, several principals and 229 teachers. The school at tendance for 1916 was 13,542. A county normal training school and kindergarten schools are maintained in connection with the public school system. In addition there are the Bay City Business College, the Holy Rosary Academy, the Mercy Hospital Training School for Nurses, the Oral School for the Deaf. There are three libraries, holding a total of nearly 80,000 volumes. Religion and charity in Bay City are represented by its 36 churches and mis sions: 12 private and parochial schools; three charitable institutions and three hospitals. Bay City has two daily newspapers and several weekly publications.
History.— The first white settler located here in 1831, being employed by the government to teach the Indians farming, in accordance with a treaty signed with the Chippewas in 1819, whereby they ceded this territory to the United States. There were two reservations,
comprising about 3,000 acres within what is now the corporate limits of the municipality. A large part of this land fell into the hands of one Stephen V. R. Riley who lived with the Indians for many years and married one of their women. In 1836 his son, John Riley, sold a large tract of this land to a company of Detroit merchants, who began laying out a settlement. Six years later these pioneers ac quired from the Saginaw Bay Company that territory which was then known as lower Sagi naw, which considerably enlarged their prop erty. After 1844 the settlement began to de velop rapidly with the growing demand for white pine lumber, which could be had along the river above the settlement in unlimited quantities, then the richest pine forests known in the United States. In 1859 the settlement was incorporated, though it did not receive its city charter until 1865.
According to the Federal census figures of 1900 the population of Bay City was then 27,628. Five years later fol lowed the consolidation with West Bay City, which then gave the municipality a population estimated at 40,000. In 1910 the census figures showed a population of 45,116.