Before John Green settled there in 1844, the area was inhabited only by Indians living near a bend in the Flat River at Shearer Road and Industrial Drive, where two well-established Indian trails crossed: the Saginaw-Pentwater trail and the "Up-river" trail running north from Belding and Lyons-Muir to Turk Lake. Green arrived from New York in 1844 and built his first cabin where Tower Park is located on Franklin Street, and he and his brother-in-law Samuel Demorest built the first sawmill on the Flat River. Lumbering and the Flat River played an important role in the town's development. Growth came rapidly, and within 10 years of Green's arrival the village had 2 sawmills, 3 blacksmith shops, a sash and blind factory, a grist mill, planing mill, tanner, foundry, wagon factory, printing office, 6 general stores, 3 groceries, a drug store, a book store, a clothing store, a furniture store, and 3 saloons. The earliest known photo of Greenville, taken in 1868, shows workers laying a wooden crosswalk across Lafayette Street at Washington Street. In the early 1900s, Lafayette Street included the three-story Eriksen building, built in 1875 at the northwest corner of Lafayette Street and Montcalm Street, whose third floor held a 600 person opera house for speakers and performances, where Susan B. Anthony spoke about women's suffrage in 1879; the building was torn down in 1969. The northeast corner of Lafayette and Grove Street has had a hotel since 1855, beginning with the Rossman House, which burned in 1867, followed by the Northern Hotel, which burned in 1900, and then the Winter Inn, commissioned by T.B. Winter in 1901 and the longest-standing hotel in Greenville's history.