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A SKETCH OF LUCIUS LYON by GEORGE H. WHITE
Mr. Lyon was then nominated and confirmed and accepted the office. Such in brief is the history of the change which brought into Detroit the surveyor general's office, adding not a little to her importance in those days. Mr. Lyon filled that office at the time of his death.
Lucius Lyon was an enterprising man, always engaged in some plan that had the public good as an element. Thus he spent large sums of money in endeavoring to introduce into Michigan the manufacture of beet sugar, in introducing new kinds of wheat and of grasses, in improving sheep and in the manufacture of salt.
He expended about ten thousand dollars in the boring of a salt well at Grand Rapids, and the erection of salt works. It was successful but not financially, yet he manufactured many thousand bushels of salt that was sold and widely used in Michigan. This fact had much to do with the experiments afterwards made which brought Michigan into the front rank of salt producing states. His works would have been financially successful if the improved and cheapened methods employed in 1860 and succeeding years in boring and piping artesian wells had been then known. As it was he sunk over $10, 000 in the operation.
Mr. Lyon had two large experimental farms, one near Lyons and the other at Schoolcraft. On these he had many agricultural experiments pursued for the intended benefit of the people of this State. The expenses he paid out of his own means. If the public did not reap any benefit from them it does not detract from the merits of his efforts, but the public did reap great benefits from them in many ways; each failure was a warning, and each success was patterned after.
Mr. Lyon was concerned with Judge Carrol and others in platting a large portion of the city of Grand Rapids, it being the major part of the business section of that city. He was one of the original platters, I think, of the city of Madison, the capital of Wisconsin, and of several other places in Wisconsin. He was also one of the original platters of the city of Kalamazoo, and was the platter of Schoolcraft, giving to it the name of his friend.
Michigan
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