Muskegon, then and now
1937
On the historic maps, click on an area to see the appraiser's description, which will appear on the right. To enlarge those descriptions, click on it and it will appear on the left. Scroll around to see how they identified the neighborhood and its inhabitants and how appraisers felt about the area's long-term prospects.
2015
Muskegon is split by its eponymous lake. In 1937, business executives ‒ all white ‒ lived along the northern shore (shaded green on old map). Today, in a city that's 35 percent African-American, those same northern shore neighborhoods, home to roughly 3,800 people, remain less than 2 percent black (shaded green in 2015 map). In neighborhoods to the south, where blacks comprised 10-15 percent of the population in the 1930s, the black population today ranges from 36 to 90 percent (shaded red in modern map).
See the other historic maps in this series:
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