GRAND RAPIDS, MI — Although Henry P. Bridge spent only about nine years in the Grand Rapids area, he left a lasting impression on the city’s west side.
So much so that a street was named after him: Bridge Street, in downtown Grand Rapids.
Bridge settled in Grand Rapids, then called Kent, in the mid-1800s, where he built the first sawmill on the East Side Water Power Canal during the peak year of Michigan’s land boom, according to the Grand Rapids Public Library History Center’s digital collections…