Editing Crockery Township, Michigan (section)

==History==
The Western Michigan region has been inhabited by the [[Ottawa]] Native Americans for centuries. It is from this tribe that the county takes its name.

The first European explorers in the Ottawa County region were the French-Canadian explorers [[Louis Joliet]] and Father [[Jacques Marquette]], who passed through the region in the mid 17th century.

European settlement in the area proceeded slowly until the mid 19th century, when [[zinc]] was discovered in Crockery Creek in 1858. (Barnes, 1997) In 1872, the town of Nunica was officially incorporated, the name taken from the Ottawa word for zinc. The 1880 census showed approximately 1,000 settlers in the region. (Barnes, 1997)