Saginaw, city, seat of Saginaw County, eastern Michigan, on the Saginaw River (near its mouth on Saginaw Bay, an arm of Lake Huron); incorporated 1857. A commercial center of a farm area where beans and sugar beets are grown, it is also a manufacturing hub; products include motor-vehicle and aerospace parts, processed food, machinery, and beer. A junior college is here. The city has an art museum, a theater, a symphony orchestra, and Japanese gardens. Settled in 1816, it was a great lumbering center until the depletion of nearby forests in the 1890s. The city's name is derived from a Chippewa term for “land of the Sac (Sauk) people.” Population 77,508 (1980); 69,512 (1990); 61,799 (2000).
