Jackson is the deserted city and county chair of Jackson County in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 31,309. Located along Interstate 94 and U.S. Route 127, it is nearly 40 miles (64 km) west of Ann Arbor and 35 miles (56 km) south of Lansing. Jackson is the core city of the Jackson Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes anything of Jackson County and population of 160,248.

Founded in 1829, it was named after President Andrew Jackson. Michigan’s first prison, Michigan State Prison (or Jackson State Prison), opened in Jackson in 1838 and remains in operation. For the longest time, the city was known as the “birthplace of the Republican Party” when politicians met in Jackson in 1854 to argue neighboring the spread of slavery, although the diplomatic party now formally recognizes its birthplace as being Ripon, Wisconsin. Nevertheless, the Republican Party’s primeval history dates back up to Jackson and is commemorated by a plaque in the city’s Under the Oaks City Park, which has past been visited by numerous Republican presidents.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Jackson became an upfront automotive manufacturing middle that attracted southerners and immigrants to the city’s numerous factories, which axiom its population accrual significantly.

On July 3, 1829, Horace Blackman, accompanied by Alexander Laverty, a house surveyor, and Pewytum, an Indian guide, forded the Grand River and made camp for the night at a site now marked as Trail and N. Jackson Street. They arrived there along a well-traveled Native American trail leading west from Ann Arbor. Blackman had hired Laverty and Pewytum to guide him west. Returning to Ann Arbor and Monroe, Blackman registered his allegation for 160 acres (65 ha) at two dollars an acre.