Battle Creek (pop. 52,721), a city in south-central Michigan, is a health center and one of the world’s leading producers of breakfast cereal. The Kellogg Company and Post Holdings, Inc., produce breakfast cereal there. Battle Creek lies about 110 miles (177 kilometers) west of Detroit. The Battle Creek metropolitan area has a population of 134,310.
Battle Creek became the headquarters of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in the latter half of the 1800’s. The city’s sanitarium and cereal food industries developed from the health reforms of the Adventists. W. K. Kellogg founded what is now the Kellogg Company in 1906. His brother, John Harvey Kellogg, pioneered in the development of the famous Battle Creek Sanitarium. The former main building of the sanitarium became the Percy Jones General Hospital for soldiers wounded in World War II (1939-1945). The building is now known as the Hart-Dole-Inouye Federal Center. It houses several federal agencies and activities. In addition to breakfast cereals, industries in Battle Creek produce automobile parts, electrical equipment, health and exercise equipment, machinery, and paper products.
Battle Creek was settled in 1831 and chartered in 1859. The city has a council-manager form of government.
