Guide book

A guide book or travel guide is "a book of information about a place, designed for the use of visitors or tourists". Travel guides can also take the form of travel websites such as the free and open Wikivoyage.

It will usually include full details relating to accommodation, restaurants, transportation, and activities. Maps of varying detail and historical and cultural information are often included. Different kinds of guide books exist, focusing on different aspects of travel, from adventure travel to relaxation, or aimed at travelers with different incomes, or focusing on sexual orientation or types of diet.

History

Antiquity

A forerunner of the guidebook was the periplus, an itinerary from landmark to landmark of the ports along a coast. A periplus such as the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea was a manuscript document that listed, in order, the ports and coastal landmarks, with approximate intervening distances, that the captain of a vessel could expect to find along a shore. This work was possibly written in the middle of the 1st century CE. It served the same purpose as the later Roman itinerarium of road stops.

Detroit

Detroit (/dᵻˈtrɔɪt/) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Michigan, the fourth-largest city in the Midwest and the largest city on the United States–Canada border. It is the seat of Wayne County, the most populous county in the state. Detroit's metropolitan area, known as Metro Detroit, is home to 5.3 million people, making it the fourteenth-most populous metropolitan area in the United States and the second-largest in the Midwestern United States (behind Chicago). It is a major port on the Detroit River, a strait that connects the Great Lakes system to the Saint Lawrence Seaway. The City of Detroit anchors the second-largest economic region in the Midwest, behind Chicago, and the thirteenth-largest in the United States.

Detroit is the center of a three-county urban area (population 3,734,090, area of 1,337 square miles (3,460 km²), a 2010 United States Census) six-county metropolitan statistical area (2010 Census population of 4,296,250, area of 3,913 square miles [10,130 km²]), and a nine-county Combined Statistical Area (2010 Census population of 5,218,852, area of 5,814 square miles [15,060 km²]). The Detroit–Windsor area, a commercial link straddling the Canada–U.S. border, has a total population of about 5,700,000. The Detroit metropolitan region holds roughly one-half of Michigan's population.

Henry Ford

Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and the sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production.

Although Ford did not invent the automobile or the assembly line, he developed and manufactured the first automobile that many middle class Americans could afford. In doing so, Ford converted the automobile from an expensive curiosity into a practical conveyance that would profoundly impact the landscape of the twentieth century. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry. As the owner of the Ford Motor Company, he became one of the richest and best-known people in the world. He is credited with "Fordism": mass production of inexpensive goods coupled with high wages for workers. Ford had a global vision, with consumerism as the key to peace. His intense commitment to systematically lowering costs resulted in many technical and business innovations, including a franchise system that put dealerships throughout most of North America and in major cities on six continents. Ford left most of his vast wealth to the Ford Foundation and arranged for his family to control the company permanently.

Michigan

Michigan ⁱ/ˈmɪʃᵻɡən/ is a state located in the Great Lakes and midwestern regions of the United States. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake". Michigan is the tenth most populous of the 50 United States, with the 11th most extensive total area (the largest state by total area east of the Mississippi River). Its capital is Lansing, and the largest city is Detroit.

Michigan is the only state to consist of two peninsulas. The Lower Peninsula, to which the name Michigan was originally applied, is often noted to be shaped like a mitten. The Upper Peninsula (often referred to as "the U.P.") is separated from the Lower Peninsula by the Straits of Mackinac, a five-mile (8 km) channel that joins Lake Huron to Lake Michigan. The two peninsulas are connected by the Mackinac Bridge. The state has the longest freshwater coastline of any political subdivision in the world, being bounded by four of the five Great Lakes, plus Lake Saint Clair. As a result, it is one of the leading U.S. states for recreational boating. Michigan also has 64,980 inland lakes and ponds. A person in the state is never more than six miles (9.7 km) from a natural water source or more than 85 miles (137 km) from a Great Lakes shoreline.

Comerica Park

Comerica Park is an open-air ballpark located in Downtown Detroit. It serves as the home of the Detroit Tigers of Major League Baseball, replacing historic Tiger Stadium in 2000.

The park is named after Comerica Bank, which was founded in Detroit and was based there when the park opened. Comerica's headquarters have since been moved to Dallas, though the bank still retains a large presence in Detroit. The stadium's seating capacity is 41,574. There is a Detroit People Mover station about a block from the stadium (at Grand Circus Park). Comerica Park sits on the original site of the Detroit College of Law.

History

Construction

Since their founding in 1901, the Tigers had played at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull Avenues in Detroit's Corktown section. For the last 88 of those years, they played at what eventually became Tiger Stadium. By the mid-1990s, it had become apparent that the much-beloved park could not be renovated any further.

Groundbreaking for a new ballpark to replace Tiger Stadium for the Tigers was held on October 29, 1997 and the new stadium was opened to the public in 2000. At the time of construction, the scoreboard in left field was the largest in Major League Baseball. The first game was held on April 11, 2000, against the Seattle Mariners. The new stadium is part of a downtown revitalization plan for the city of Detroit, which included the construction of Ford Field, adjacent to the park. In December 1998, Comerica Bank agreed to pay $66 million over 30 years for the naming rights for the new ballpark. Upon its opening, there was some effort to try to find a nickname for the park, with the abbreviation CoPa suggested by many. It is often referred to simply as Comerica. The first playoff game at Comerica was played on October 6, 2006 against the New York Yankees. It hosted its first World Series later that month.