Dearborn is a city in Wayne County in the U.S. state of Michigan. An inner-ring suburb of Detroit, Dearborn borders Detroit to the south and west, roughly 7 miles (11.3 km) west of downtown Detroit. As of the 2020 census, it had a population of 109,976, ranking as the seventh-largest city in Michigan. Dearborn is best known as the home of the Ford Motor Company, and the birthplace and hometown of its founder, Henry Ford.
The first written settlement of Dearborn dates to 18th century by French Canadian voyageurs who initially called the settlement “La Belle Fontaine” or “Place aux Fontaines” because of the abundant springs in the city. It is for this reason that Dearborn was once named Springwells, an anglicization of the French name.The settlement was connected to the Detroit River ribbon farm communities and other farms connected to the Rouge River and the Sauk Trail. The community grew in the 19th century with the establishment of the Detroit Arsenal on the Chicago Road linking Detroit and Chicago. In the 20th century, it developed as a major manufacturing hub for the automotive industry.
Henry Ford was born on a farm that was once at the intersection of Ford Road and Greenfield Road. Ford later built his estate, Fair Lane, in Dearborn, as well as his River Rouge Complex, the largest factory of his Ford empire. He developed mass production of automobiles, and based the world headquarters of the Ford Motor Company here. The city has a campus of the University of Michigan as well as Henry Ford College. The Henry Ford, the United States' largest indoor-outdoor historic museum complex and Metro Detroit's leading tourist attraction, is located here.Dearborn residents are Americans primarily of European or Middle Eastern ancestry, many descendants of 19th and 20th-century immigrants. The primary European ethnicities, as identified by respondents to the census, are German, Polish, Irish, and Italian. New waves of immigration from the Middle East came in the late 20th century, Muslims and Christians from Lebanon and Palestine, as well as immigrants from Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. Dearborn is home to the largest Muslim population in the United States per capita as well as the largest mosque in North America.