Samuel Munson built a sawmill and log cabin here in the spring of 1825, and later that year Jesse Decker arrived with more settlers to establish the first Euro-American community in Orion Township. The place became known as the Decker Settlement, and by 1837 it had grown into a busy commercial center with a sawmill, tavern, post office, general store, blacksmith shop, school, and cemetery. After the post office moved to Lake Orion in 1837 and the railroad later bypassed the community, the settlement eventually died out. Its surviving traces are the remnants of a millpond dam and pioneer graves in nearby Bigler Cemetery. Jesse Decker had come to Michigan from upstate New York with his wife Mary in 1825 and homesteaded there. In 1830, with help from local Indians, he raised the first frame barn in the area. In 1835, settlers gathered in his home to form a township, naming it Orion at his suggestion, and elected him the first township supervisor, a role he held almost continuously until 1854. Active in politics, he was elected to the Michigan House of Representatives in 1837 and also served as postmaster and justice of the peace. By 1840 he operated one of the first taverns in Orion Township and owned 440 acres of land. The state park opened in 1946, and park management lived in the last surviving building until it was demolished in 1982.