The first roads train. The history of railroading in Michigan began in 1830, seven years before the territory became a state, with the chartering of the Pontiac and Detroit Railroad, but nothing came of this. This was the first such charter granted in the
Northwest Territory, and occurred the same year the
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad began operation. Joining the P&D in 1832 was the
Detroit and St. Joseph Railroad, which aimed to cross the entire
Lower Peninsula and establish a connection with
Lake Michigan on the
St. Joseph River. Neither of these projects had made any progress when in 1833 the
Michigan Territorial Council granted a charter to yet another company, the
Erie and Kalamazoo Railroad. The Erie & Kalamazoo was to connect Port Lawrence (now
Toledo, Ohio) on
Lake Erie to some point on the
Kalamazoo River, which flows into Lake Michigan. By November 2, 1836, the E&K had completed a line from Port Lawrence northeast to
Adrian, Michigan, in
Lenawee County. Horse teams drew a solitary car along the line, Further north, the
Detroit and Pontiac Railroad had completed a line from
Detroit north to
Royal Oak. Operations began in 1838 but would be horse-drawn until the following year. After financial difficulties and government entanglements the railroad reached
Pontiac in 1843, for a total length of .
The state fiasco for the entire announcement. By 1837, Michigan had the beginnings of a railroad network, but one with which both the government and the people were dissatisfied. In the first seven years of railroading in Michigan (1830–1837), the
Michigan Territorial Council approved charters for 23 private railroad companies. Of these, only five completed and opened lines, and then for a total in-state (excluding Ohio) length of only . The two main lines, the Erie & Kalamazoo (Toledo–Adrian) and the Detroit & Pontiac (Detroit–Royal Oak) reflected the needs of the local business interests which built them and were inadequate from the perspective of the newly organized state government. Additionally, the settlement of the
Toledo War placed Toledo in Ohio, which meant that the one railroad-connected port on
Lake Erie lay in a different state. Therefore, using the state of New York's construction of the
Erie Canal as a model, Michigan embarked on an ambitious project to construct three railroad lines across the state. Michigan's project was not unusual at the time: her neighbors
Illinois,
Indiana and
Ohio all had either government-funded building programs or generous assistance packages for private companies. Michigan lawmakers proposed to build three lines from the east side of the state to locations on
Lake Michigan: • The "Northern" line:
St. Clair (on the
St. Clair River which separates Michigan from the
Canadian province of
Ontario) to
Grand Haven. • The "Central" line:
Detroit to
St. Joseph. • The "Southern" line:
Monroe (on Lake Erie) to
New Buffalo. The Central line would connect with the D&P in Detroit, while the Southern line would connect with the E&K near
Adrian. The government, under the leadership of
Governor Stevens T. Mason, would finance the whole project through a US$5 million loan. A report prepared by a legislative committee predicted that construction of all three lines would take no more than five years, that revenues earned from the partially completed lines would be sufficient to satisfy interest payments during that period, and that once all three railroads were in full operation revenues earned would permit the state to pay off the loan in 20 years
and turn a substantial profit. These assumptions proved to be wildly optimistic, leading to what one historian termed a "fiasco" and another an "embarrassment." Michigan's attempt to secure the loan coincided with the
Panic of 1837: banks failed, sales of land dried up, and money was hard to obtain. The construction of the lines was bedeviled by competition between local interests, all of whom wanted to benefit from the state project. An investigation into the management of the project found instances of graft and extravagance and a general inefficiency. At the end of 1845 the state had spent some US$4 million; the "Southern" line had reached
Hillsdale and the "Central"
Battle Creek, while the "Northern" still existed on paper only. Altogether only of a projected -plus were in operation, and the state's finances were in chaos. In 1846 the legislature sold both the "Southern" and "Central" lines to private investors at a loss; out of the ruins of the state's projects arose the
Michigan Southern Railroad and
Michigan Central Railroad. Another outcome was Michigan's revised constitution of 1850, which explicitly forbade direct investment in or construction of "any work of
internal improvement."
Across the Lower Peninsula Among other requirements, that state in its sale of the "Central" and "Southern" lines stipulated that both companies complete their lines to points on the coast of
Lake Michigan. The
Michigan Central then stood at
Kalamazoo, on the
Kalamazoo River, while the
Michigan Southern stood at
Hillsdale, far to the east. Racing ahead of the legislature's requirement, both companies sensed the growing importance of
Chicago,
Illinois, a port city on the southwest coast of Lake Michigan at the mouth of the
Chicago River, which flowed into the
Mississippi. The Central turned its line south toward
New Buffalo, a small town close to the
Michigan/
Indiana border, while the Southern, after some negotiating with the state, bypassed Lake Michigan altogether and dropped south into Indiana, passing through
Sturgis and on into
South Bend, Indiana. On February 20, 1852, the Southern Michigan line from
Toledo became the first Michigan company to run trains into Chicago, In the same year, the last low quality and hazardous
strap rails were removed on Michigan state railroads.
Winfield Scott Gerrish is credited with revolutionizing lumbering in Michigan by building a seven-mile-long logging railroad from
Lake George to the
Muskegon River in
Clare County in 1877. Only ten years later 89 logging railroads operated in Michigan, by far the most in the country. The proposed lines would cover several gaps in Michigan's growing railroad network: fully half the land grants would go to railroads in the Upper Peninsula, where substantial mineral resources had been discovered, while two routes in the Lower Peninsula would run north–south, bisecting the existing cross-state routes. Even with the land grants, railroad construction remained a difficult prospect. The availability of the grants did not guarantee financial success;
John Murray Forbes, a major backer of the Michigan Central, considered them irrelevant compared to the intelligence of the railroad's management. The
Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad (GR&I) faced serious difficulties in raising capital, and it was only through the intervention of the
Pennsylvania Railroad (via its subsidiary the
Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railway) that the GR&I finished enough of its planned route to save its charter. Even then, the railroad entered foreclosure in 1895. The
Flint and Pere Marquette Railroad (F&PM) initially eschewed its land grants and built south from
East Saginaw to link up with the Detroit & Milwaukee, over whose lines it ran trains into Detroit. The first company to attempt the Amboy–Traverse Bay line, the
Amboy, Lansing and Traverse Bay Railroad, failed after completing a short line between
Lansing and
Owosso, and was eventually split between the LS&MS and the Michigan Central. In the sparsely populated Upper Peninsula railroad development revolved around the need to transport
copper and
iron ore from the resource-rich mountain ranges in the western part of the state to
Chicago,
Illinois, either through the state of
Wisconsin or on the broad highway of
Lake Michigan. The first railroad in the UP, the
Iron Mountain Railroad, preceded the land grants and was built by private funds between 1851 and 1857. Its
Negaunee-
Marquette line was completed by August 1857.
Chronology of rail line development 1867 the
Bay City & East Saginaw Railroad started regular intercity services between the namesake cities from adjacent counties. 1869 the first passenger train arrived in
Muskegon from
Ferrysburg (next to
Grand Haven). many lines were built without a true appreciation of potential profitability, resulting in a financial landscape littered with bankruptcies and companies in
receivership. ==Railroads in Michigan today==