Rogers City began as the Village of Rogers, founded by five Detroit men who sought to enter the timber business and build a community to support it: Albert Molitor, William Rogers, J. Paul Mayer, Frederic Denny Larke, and John Baptist Raymond. Molitor, a German immigrant, had briefly served in the Union Army during the Civil War and then worked in Detroit for the Lake Survey office. Rogers, a West Point graduate and second lieutenant assigned to the Detroit office of the Lake Survey, became Molitor's partner in the Rogers-Molitor Sawmill Co. Mayer, also a Lake Survey employee, later became Molitor's partner after Rogers withdrew and, like Molitor and Rogers, bought extensive timberlands around Rogers. Larke, an English immigrant and another civilian employee of the Lake Survey, became Molitor's business manager in Rogers, while Raymond, born into one of Detroit's old French families, was the fifth founder. In 1867 and 1868, Molitor bought a dozen parcels of timberland in Presque Isle County but needed an investor able to buy more land, including a village site, and purchase a sawmill; Rogers filled that need, likely with help from a wealthy uncle in Philadelphia. After an unsuccessful attempt to buy Crawford's Quarry, and after nearly a year of persuading Detroit land speculator John Winder to sell another tract, Rogers completed the purchase of a 98.6-acre parcel on November 27, 1869, paying about $290, or around $3 an acre. Edward Molitor, Albert Molitor's brother and a civil engineer and cartographer for the Lake Survey, drew the plat for the town, to be called Rogers City, and it was filed in July 1871. No information survives on how the name was chosen, though it may have reflected William Rogers' financial importance. Rogers himself never lived there and is known to have visited only twice. After the first election of officers, he donated a central block for a courthouse. Five years later, officials ruled that Rogers was not a city and the name was officially changed to the Village of Rogers. In 1945, when it was incorporated as a home rule city, the name was changed back to Rogers City.