Flint Farmers' Market

The Flint Farmers’ Market has been managed by Uptown Reinvestment Corporation since 2002. Previously, the market was known as the Flint City Market, and its history stretched back over a hundred years to the beginning of the 20th Century. The earliest recorded open air market began on the southeast corner of Beach and Kearsley Streets in 1905. From 1912 through 1916, the market moved to the west side of Smith Street (now Grand Traverse) along the north bank of the Flint River. After 1918, the market relocated again, this time to the southeast corner of Harrison and Union Streets (current site of the UM-Flint Thompson Library), where a permanent market building was erected in 1920. Some of our current vendors remember stories from that building, as they traveled there with their parents as small children. In 1940, built by WPA workers, the current market rose on the banks of the Flint River. The steel trusses supporting the roof date back to 1920; they are the originals from the Union Street market, wheeled over to the current site on railroad cars. The pilings anchoring today’s cement floor were cut from the old Industrial Avenue trolley tracks, which ran alongside the Buick factory a mile north of the market. We know that the market master used to live on the second floor in space currently occupied by Steady Eddy’s and Art at the Market, that there used to be a police mini-station in what is now Thompson Creek Turkey Farm, and that there was a police vehicle storage area and firing range in the basement area. When you come to the market, wander around and imagine what the old place must have been like; we’ve come a long way from those days.