Sent by Paris, France’s King Louis XIV, Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit was established as the first permanent French settlement and new center of fur trade and military power by French officer, Antoine Laumet de la Mothe, Sieur de Cadillac in 1701.

Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit was built along the Detroit River to protect the French fur trade from the British and was named in honor of Louis XIV’s minister of marine and colonies, Louis Phélypeaux de Pontchartrain.

Le Detroit, French for ‘the strait’ eventually came to identify Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit and the surrounding area and after 1751, was known simply as Fort Detroit.