Long before Europeans arrived in Michigan, Native Americans lived throughout the region, and when the French came in the late 1600s tribes in lower Michigan included the Miami, Potawatomi, Ottawa, Ojibway or Chippewa, Sauk, and Wyandot or Huron. The Potawatomi were the dominant tribe in Washtenaw County in the early 1800s, with encampments near present-day Saline, Dundee, Monroe, and other points along the River Raisin, which served as a transportation route, a source of fish, and water for drinking, washing, and cooking; their Michigan population reached about 9,000 before the Removal Act of 1830 forced most to relocate to Kansas and Oklahoma or flee to Canada, while descendants today belong to 10 tribal bands in the United States and Canada. White settlers from New York and New England began arriving in Sharon Township in 1831, and the Village of Sharon was formally organized in 1834. Sharon Mills began when Amasa Gillett and Benjamin Burnett dammed the River Raisin and built a sawmill on its banks in 1834, using water power to help settlers build shelter; the first waterwheel was six feet in diameter, made of white oak, and the sawmill operated for almost a century before it was dismantled during Henry Ford's renovations. In the 1850s John W. Rice acquired the nearby property and built a Greek Revival grist mill, where water power drove turbines, gears, belts, grindstones, elevators, and sifters to process corn, wheat, and buckwheat for local farmers. In 1890 Alexander Kirkwood bought both mills, and his son George Kirkwood operated them until their sale in 1928. Between 1920 and 1944 Henry Ford promoted his decentralized Village Industry concept, and Sharon Mills became the thirteenth of twenty such plants in southeast Michigan. After extensive renovations to the mill, dam, mill race, and river channel, and the installation of a 40 horsepower generator and a new turbine, the Sharon Mills plant officially opened in 1939, producing cigar lighters and light switches for Ford automobiles and employing 16 to 54 workers for two to four days a week, with the expectation that they farmed when not needed at the plant. The plant closed in 1946, and after Ford Motor Company left, Sharon Mills entered a new period of local enterprise under Walter and Ruth Graves, then Eric and Lillian Martin, who repaired the generator; Lillian Martin later lived in the mill and operated it as an antique store with former Governor John Swainson. Sharon Mills was listed on the State Register of Historic Places on November 16, 1989, then in the 1990s Craig Hawker operated it as a winery before he and Diane Hawker sold it in 1999 to the Washtenaw County Parks and Recreation Commission, which restored the buildings to their Ford-era condition and opened Sharon Mills County Park as a place for recreation, learning, and preservation of local heritage.