 De Pere is part of the Green Bay Metropolitan Statistical Area.At the arrival of the first European, Jean Nicolet, who visited the place in 1634–1635, De Pere was the site of a polyglot settlement of several thousand attracted by the fishing at the first rapids of the Fox River.In 1671 French Jesuit explorer Père Claude-Jean Allouez founded the St. Francis Xavier Mission at the last set of rapids on the Fox River before it enters The Bay of Green Bay.