From village to city: a short Walled Lake timeline
Walled Lake’s story connects travel, trade and recreation. The City’s 2017 master plan identifies Walter B. Hewitt’s arrival in 1825 as the first known European settlement. By 1840, a trading post, general store and the Pioneer Inn served the settlement near today’s East Walled Lake Drive and Liberty Street.
A stagecoach connection between Pontiac and Milford followed in 1851. Walled Lake became a village in 1929 and a city in 1954.
These milestones describe part of the community’s development, not the beginning of its human history: Indigenous people lived around the lake before European settlement.