St. Joseph, colloquially known as St. Joe, is a city and the county seat of Berrien County, Michigan. It was incorporated as a village in 1834 and as a city in 1891. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 8,365. It lies on the shore of Lake Michigan, at the mouth of the St. Joseph River, about 90 miles (140 km) east-northeast of Chicago. It is home of the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers.

The mouth of the St. Joseph River at present day St. Joseph was an important tapering off of Amerindian travel and commerce, as it lay along a key water route amongst the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. Both the Miami and Potawatomi used this route and would use the Place as a camp. The St. Joseph River after that allowed for relationship with the Sauk Trail, which was the major home trail through Michigan. In 1669, the mouth of the river was seen by European explorers. French fortune-hunter René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, built Fort Miami on the bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. In 1679, he waited for the ship Le Griffon, which never returned. Once the ship was deemed lost, La Salle and his men made the first land crossing of the demean peninsula by Europeans.

The next long-lasting white settler in St. Joseph was William Burnett, who not far afield off from 1780 started a trading read out at the mouth of the St. Joseph River. The broadcast traded food, furs and goods in imitation of places including Detroit, Mackinac and Chicago. In 1829, Calvin Britain, who had come from Jefferson County, New York, and had taught at the Carey Mission at Niles for two years, came to the site of St. Joseph. Shortly thereafter, he laid out the plat of the village, then known as Newburyport, named after a coastal city in Massachusetts. Britain was influential in attracting other settlers to the area. Lots sold brusquely and the village flourished.

The St. Joseph river mouth was straightened through a channel and piers were supplementary later. The first lighthouse in St. Joseph contends with Chicago’s original lighthouse as the first to be built upon Lake Michigan. Newburyport misused its pronounce to St. Joseph considering it was incorporated upon March 7, 1834. The city was incorporated June 5, 1891.