In the late 19th century, it was a major center of wooden shipbuilding and lumber processing.

The area of Marine City had been Ojibwa territory for centuries before the first European contact.

Beginning in the 17th century, French trappers and missionaries entered the territory, followed by settlers in the colonial period on both sides of the Detroit and St. Clair rivers.

French Canadians also lived on the other side of the river in a small farming community known as Petite Côte.

The Americans began to call the community "Yankee Point", because so many settlers came from the Northern Tier of states, with late 18th and 19th-century westward migration originating from New England and New York.

Thriving on lumber trade and shipbuilding, the village re-incorporated as a city in June 1887.

[4] The second half of the 19th century was the period of great growth in the village, with many workers employed in the lumber and shipping industries.

Rafts of lumber were moved down the St. Clair River in the spring to be worked at Marine City or Detroit.

As the lumber business ran down with the exploitation of forests, the area became linked to other resource extraction.

Freighters carried iron from Duluth, Minnesota, which had been mined in the Mesabi Range, to Ashtabula, Ohio for steel processing.

Marine City was known as the town on the St. Clair River where the captains of lake freighters lived.

Also joining the two acting theaters is the old Mariner Theatre, which serves as a special event center, movie theater, gallery for fine art Models, and site of the builders model for the ocean-going Titanic.

The Heather House, now operated as a bed and breakfast, was built in the Queen Anne Victorian-style.