In 1823 Louis Chevalier, a French-Canadian trader, received a grant of five hundred arpents, or 640 acres, from the United States government on the AuSable River, laid out in a long, narrow French ribbon-farm pattern that still appears on maps of AuSable Township. From around 1820 to the mid-1830s, he traded from a hand-hewn log blockhouse near this site, bartering goods for furs, fish, and game brought by Chippewa and white trappers, hunters, and fishermen in the area. Although Chevalier left in 1833, ruins of the structure remained visible in 1867, and many regard his trading post as the first business of consequence in Iosco County.