SUBSTANCE ABUSE TREATMENT PROGRAM IN Mt Clemens

Mount Clemens

Mount Clemens is a city in, and county seat of, Macomb County, Michigan, United States. The population was 15,697 at the 2020 census. It is part of the Detroit metropolitan area. Mount Clemens is in south-central Macomb County, 20 miles northeast of downtown Detroit, 37 miles southwest of Port Huron, and 3 miles west of Lake St. Clair. The Clinton River runs through the city. According to the United States Census Bureau, Mount Clemens has a total area of 4.21 square miles.

Mount Clemens was first surveyed in 1795 after the Revolutionary War by Christian Clemens, who settled there four years later. Brooks and Clemens platted the land, and the town was named after Clemens in 1818. On January 15, 1818, Michigan Territory Governor Lewis Cass signed a proclamation establishing the County of Macomb, named after General Alexander Macomb, hero of the War of 1812. Three months later, Governor Cass named Mount Clemens the County seat and appointed Christian Clemens Judge of the County Court. On January 26, 1837, the little settlement was incorporated as a village, the same date that Michigan became the 26th state admitted to the Union. It was incorporated as a city in 1879.

Historically, Mount Clemens’ largest industry for more than 100 years, from 1873 to 1974, was tourism related to the mineral baths, drawn from springs that were scattered throughout the city. Such mineral baths were very popular and were tourist destinations. At the peak of the industry, the city had 11 bathhouses and several hotels related to this trade. Over the years, noted visitors such as film actors Clark Gable and Mae West, athletes Babe Ruth and Jack Dempsey, news magnate William Randolph Hearst, and the wealthy Vanderbilt family vacationed in the city to take advantage of the mineral springs baths. This era earned the city its famous nicknames “Bath City, U.S.A.” and “Bath City of America.”

Beginning in 1880, and for two decades after World War I, there were ten major rose growers with over 30 acres under glass. Mount Clemens was once known as the Rose Capital of the United States. The city was also renowned for its pottery industry and once ranked among the country’s leading producers of ceramics.

At Grand Trunk Station, the young Thomas Alva Edison first learned telegraphy. As a teenage newsboy on the Grand Trunk line, Thomas Edison rescued station agent J. U. Mackenzie’s young son from an oncoming car, and Mackenzie repaid him by teaching him railroad telegraphy at this station — training that helped launch Edison’s later work with electricity and communication. The Grand Trunk depot is now operated as the Michigan Transit Museum.

The racial makeup of the city was 70.0% White, 24.8% African American, 0.3% Native American, 0.5% Asian, 0.8% from other races, and 3.6% from two or more races. The median household income in Mount Clemens is $43,018. In Mount Clemens, 20.1% of residents have an income below the poverty line.

The city government is composed of a mayor and a city council. The current mayor is Laura Kropp. On April 5, 1954, a new City Charter calling for a City Manager form of government was passed. It also called for an elected Mayor and six Commissioners, elected at large. The city already disbanded the 113-year-old police department in 2005 to cut costs. The Macomb County Sheriff’s Office now provides primary policing services in Mount Clemens.

Selfridge Air National Guard Base, on a peninsula east of the city, has a military aviation museum with aircraft dating to the 1920s. Other landmarks include the Crocker House Museum, the Anton Art Center (housed in the former 1904 Carnegie Library building), and Clemens Park, where the city’s founder Christian Clemens is buried. The Olympia Spa and Salon on Cass Avenue continues to offer mineral baths today. The Michigan Transit Museum preserves the Grand Trunk Railroad depot where Edison learned his trade.

City of Mount Clemens