Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Benton Harbor, MI

Benton Harbor is a city in Berrien County in southwest Michigan, on Lake Michigan at the mouth of the St. Joseph River.

Benton Harbor and St. Joseph, on opposite sides of the St. Joseph River, are known together as the Twin Cities.

The village was laid out in 1860 by Sterne Brunson, Henry C. Morton and Charles Hull and first called Brunson Harbor, on wetlands along the Paw Paw River.

The founders promoted a canal through the marsh that was completed in 1862, and that canal — the origin of the 'harbor' in the city's name — turned the town into a shipping and manufacturing center.

In 1866 the settlement was renamed Benton Harbor for Missouri senator Thomas Hart Benton, who had helped Michigan achieve statehood, and it was incorporated as a city in 1891.

Benton Harbor had 9,103 residents at the 2020 census, down from a peak of 19,136 in 1960.

The 2020 census counted 3,329 households in Benton Harbor, and more than 80 percent of the city's residents are African American.

Whirlpool Corporation, in Benton Harbor since 1911, is the city's largest employer, and between 2010 and 2016 it invested about $155 million in two Benton Harbor facilities housing more than 1,500 corporate and engineering employees.

Benton Harbor was run by a state-appointed emergency financial manager from 2010 to 2014 during a long fiscal crisis.

Jean Klock Park, a half-mile of Lake Michigan dunes and beach, was given to the children of Benton Harbor by the Klock family in 1917, and part of it now adjoins the Jack Nicklaus-designed Harbor Shores golf course.