Biohazard and Pathogen Disinfection in Manchester, MI

Manchester is a city in southwestern Washtenaw County, on the River Raisin west of Ann Arbor.

Manchester is one of Michigan's newest cities: after more than 150 years as a village, 66 percent of its residents voted on November 7, 2023 to become a city, and Manchester officially incorporated as a city on November 15, 2023.

The Manchester area opened to settlement after Congress funded the Chicago Road in 1824, a military road between Detroit and Fort Dearborn in Chicago that followed the old Sauk Trail.

Surveyor John Mack noted the Manchester site as 'a good mill seat' in 1824, and John Gilbert, who had worked on sections of the Erie Canal, bought 80 acres along the River Raisin there on May 10, 1826.

Gilbert began building a grist mill on the River Raisin in 1832, and the original village plat - named after Manchester, New York - was filed on March 25, 1835.

A version of the Manchester mill remained on its original site into the 21st century; in 1976 the Historical Society of Michigan honored it as the oldest operating business on its original site in the state, though grist operations ended in 1981.

Manchester absorbed its downstream rival settlement of Soulesville when both were incorporated together as the village of Manchester on March 16, 1867, and the city offices and public library now stand on the old Soulesville site.

The 2020 census counted 2,037 people in Manchester, and the 2010 census had counted 938 households in the then-village.

The River Raisin flows through the center of Manchester, and state highway M-52 runs through the middle of the city.

Michigan Lutheran Seminary first opened in Manchester in 1885 before relocating to Saginaw two years later.