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Bay City, 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

Of the Michigan cities for which HOLC produced maps, Bay City has the smallest black population in the 1930s and only one neighborhood had blacks (and it was colored red on the 1930s map, on the east bank of the Saginaw River). Today the largest concentrations of African Americans remain on the east side of the river (in yellow).

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