Lansing, city in south central Michigan and capital of the state. The city is located in Ingham, Eaton, and Clinton counties. The Grand River winds through Lansing and is joined by the Red Cedar River not far from the downtown area. In addition to being the seat of the state government, Lansing is a manufacturing center. Manufactures include motor vehicles, motor-vehicle parts, printed materials, and metal goods. Among the points of interest are the State Capitol (completed 1878), the Michigan Historical Museum, the Impression 5 Science Center, the Lansing Art Gallery, and the Carl G. Fenner Arboretum. The city is the site of Great Lakes Christian College (1949), Thomas M. Cooley Law School (1972), a campus (established in 1979) of Davenport College of Business, and a community college. In adjacent East Lansing is the large Michigan State University (1855).
A number of families came to the area of present-day Lansing in the 1840s to claim land they had purchased in what turned out to be a community that existed only on paper. Many of the settlers decided to remain despite their disillusionment. They named the new settlement after their home in Lansing, New York, which had been named to honor the American jurist and political leader John Lansing. The area was still chiefly a wilderness inhabited by a few pioneers when the Michigan legislature, in 1847 after months of wrangling, chose Lansing to replace Detroit as the site of the state capital. The first session of the legislature was held in the city the following year, and Lansing incorporated in 1859. In 1896 Ransom E. Olds produced his first internal combustion vehicle in the city, thus spurring a wave of industrial development. By the early 1900s the city was a major center of automobile and gasoline engine manufacture. Olds's company, Oldsmobile, a precursor of General Motors, is still one of Lansing's largest employers.
