USA > Michigan > Cass County > A twentieth century history of Cass County, Michigan > Part 18
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"It is noticeable that the principal Indian trails, like our own main thoroughfares, ran east and west, while others tributary to these came in from the north and south. The Chicago trail, more important because more used than any of the others, coming from the east, entered the county near the half-mile post on the east side of section I in South Porter, and ran thence westerly, crossing sections 1, 2, 3. 4. 5. 8, 7, and 18 in South Porter; sections 13, 14, 15, 16, 21, 20, 17, 18, and 7 in Mason: sections 12, II, 10, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7. in Ontwa: and sections 12, 11, 10, 15, 16. 17. 18 in Milton. The Chicago road, as it is now traveled, varies but little from the trail as above described.
"Near the corner of sections 4. 5. 8, 9, in South Porter, the Chi- cago trail was intersected by the Shavehead trail, a branch from the north. This trail or rather system of trails, as more than a dozen dif- ferent ones united to form it, had two main branches which came to- gether on section 29, in North Porter, near the lower end of Shavehead lake. The west branch, which commenced near the north line of Penn township, led southerly across Young's prairie, dividing on section 28 in Penn. One trail continued south and east to the west, and south of Mud lake in Calvin, the other running between Donell and Mud lakes, the two uniting near Birch lake in Porter. The last men- tioned trail was of great service to the early white settlers in procuring supplies from the old distillery situated on the East Branch of Chris- tiann creek. a little south of Donell lake. The east branch, coming from the direction of Pig Prairie Ronde, crossed the county line at the east line of section 12 in Newberg, just north of Long lake, and ran south-
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westerly across sections 12, 13, 23, 26, 27, 34, and 33, in Newberg, and sections 4, 9, 8, 17. and 20 in North Porter, and united with the west branch on section 29, as before stated. Another branch of the Shavehead trail, of less extent than either of those just described, com- inenced at the Indian sugar works, near the half-mile post on the line between sections 10 and II, in North Porter, and ran thence south- westerly, crossing Shavehead prairie in its course, and uniting with the main branch on section 32.
"Besides the three principal branches of the Shavelead trail above mentioned, there were many others. In fact, the whole township of Porter was a perfect network of trails - a regular "stamping ground" of the Indians, so to speak, as the numerous sugar works, Indian fields and villages abundantly attest.
"The second branch of the Chicago trail commenced on section 30, in Calvin, running thence southeasterly, crossing sections 2 and 12. in Mason, very nearly where the wagon road now runs, intersecting the Chicago trail at an Indian village a few rods west of the present village of Union.
"The third branch commenced on section 3, in Mason, and ran southwesterly, entering the Chicago trail near what is now Adamsville. "The fourth and last branch of the Chicago trail, coming from Fort Wayne, Indiana, intersected the county and state line near the southwest corner of section 20, in Ontwa, and running thence north- westerly, united with the main trail on section 16 in Milton.
"The trail from the Carey Mission to Grand River Mission, some- times called the Grand River road, crossed the county line near the corner of sections 6 and 7, in Howard, and running thence angling across Howard, Pokagon, Silver Creek, Wayne and Volinia townships. left the county at the north line of section 2, in Volinia. It had no branches. The present angling road running through the greater part of Pokagon township, the northwest corner of Howard and a por- tion of Wayne, occupies very nearly the same position. In fact, we are indebted to the Indian, or it may be to his predecessor, for some of our best lines of communication, and as many of these old routes are traveled today, and probably will be for all time to come, where they were marked out hundreds and possibly thousands of years ago, it shows that remarkable skill must have been exercised in their location."
Though the pioneers entered Cass county over the Indian trails, the settlement of the county had hardly progressed beyond the initial stages when there was agitation coupled with energetic effort on the part of the settlers and government alike to improve these trails into highways and to open new courses of travel.
The establishment of post-roads is a power granted to the general government by the Constitution. In pursuance of the plan of internal
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improvements thus provided for, the government undertook the laying out of such postal highways across Michigan territory long before Cass county was settled. As incidentally referred to in a previous chapter. the Chicago treaty with the Indians in 1821 contained a clause espe- cially stipulating that the United States should have the privilege of making and using a road through the Indian country from Detroit and Fort Wayne, respectively, to Chicago.
The first of the congressional acts which led toward the construc- tion of the Chicago road was passed in 1824. It authorized the presi- dent of the United States "to cause the necessary surveys, plans and estimates to be made of the routes of such roads and canals as he may deem of national importance in a commercial or military point of view. or necessary for the transportation of the public mail." The sum of thirty thousand dollars was appropriated for the surveys and the presi- dent was authorized to appoint two competent engineers.
The route from Detroit to Chicago was one of those which the executive "deemed of national importance," and the sum of ten thou- sand dollars was set apart from the appropriation for the survey. In 1825 work was commenced at the eastern end of the road. The sur- veyor began on the plan of running on nearly straight lines, but had progressed only a few miles when he came to the conclusion that if he carried out his original intention, the money apportioned for the work would be exhausted long before he could reach the western terminus. He then resolved to follow the old path of the Sacs and Foxes, and the road thus marked was never straightened. The trees were blazed fifty feet on each side of the trails, the requirement being that the road should measure one hundred feet in width.
The Chicago road was surveyed through Cass county in 1832, by Daniel G. Garnsey. The road was not worked through St. Joseph, C'ass and Berrien counties by the government until after the Black Hawk war. Immigrants made such improvements as they found necessary. and the stage companies worked the road sufficiently to get their coaches through, and built some bridges. In 1833 the government made thor- ough work of building the road through Branch county, and in 1834 through St. Joseph and Cass counties. It was grubbed out and leveled for a width of thirty feet, and the timber was cut away on each side. The first bridge over the St. Joseph was built in 1834, at Mottville, which crossing was designated as "the Grand Traverse."
The Chicago road, which follows approximately the Chicago Indian
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trail already described, was the great thoroughfare from east to west until the advent of the railroad in the late forties. The present genera- tion has difficulty in understanding the vital relation in which such a road stood to the people of sixty or seventy-five years ago. In making the journey from Cass county to Chicago hardly any one would think of going any way than by train, and to drive the distance, even over modern roadbeds, would be considered almost foolhardy.
Sixty years ago there was no other means of reaching any of the great centers. such as Chicago or Detroit, except by wagon road. It was a seven days' trip from Niles to Detroit, when now it can be made in as many hours. A traveler was fortunate if he could go from Edwardsburg to Chicago in two days.
But slow and difficult though this route was, it was the only one - the only certain means of communication and travel that an inland country possessed. Then came the railroad. It was the successor, or rather superseded this long inter-county, inter-state dirt road. and, as the trend of public thought is at last beginning to recognize, the rail- road is the national highway, the public thoroughfare, of the present. just as the Chicago road was the national postal and commercial route of the past.
The Chicago road was also known as the "Territorial road," and its course from east to west along the southern border of the county was as much of an impetus toward settlement and development of such centers as Edwardsburg during the early half of the century, as the Michigan Central proved a fostering cause in the founding and growth of Dowagiac in the latter half.
The establishment of continuous and definite highways from place to place was also one of the most important functions of the early terri- torial and state government, and continued so until the railroad age changed all the methods and means of long-distance travel and trans- portation. In the early history of the state it was not to be expected that the various and often widely separated settlements could undertake any extensive and co-operative plan of road-making. The settlers, busied with the labor of clearing the forests, of making their first crops, and providing for immediate wants and creature comforts, had no time for road building except so far as to construct a temporary way to the common trading point. Certainly without some larger supervision most of the roads would have served only local purposes and would have been short and disconnected, and many years would have been suffered
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to elapse before anything approaching a system of public highways would have been established.
As we may infer from the foregoing, few of the early roads were laid out on the rectangular plan of section lines. And even the later introduction of this method did not cause the disuse and abandonment of the favorite old-time winding and diagonal routes that had been laid out according to the needs and conveniences of the pioneers. In the new prairie localities of the west, where no settlements were made until after the land had been blocked out into regular quadrangles by govern- ment engineers, the checker-board system of roads was adopted easily and naturally. But in such a country as Cass county, covered over at the time of settlement with forests and dotted with lakes and marshes, with all the conditions and appliances primitive and new, the settlers were very likely to disregard geometrical lines, even when made by gov- ernment officials, and choose the "short cut" between localities.
During the thirties and forties the territorial council and the state legislature passed many acts "authorizing the establishment" of high- ways within or entering Cass county. Some of these became practicable thoroughfares, others never were constructed except officially.
An act of July 30, 1830, authorized the laying out of a road "com- mencing where the township road laid out by the commissioners of Ontwa township, Cass county, from Pleasant lake in a direction to Pulaski ( Elkhart ), in Indiana, intersects the southern boundary line between the territory of Michigan and the state of Indiana; thence. on the road laid out as aforesaid until it intersects the Chicago road a few rods west of the postoffice, near the house of Ezra Beardsley, running thence on the most eligible and practicable route to the entrance of the St. Joseph river into Lake Michigan." George Meacham, John Bogart and Squire Thompson were the commissioners appointed to lay out and establish this road.
Similarly, another territorial road was authorized "commencing at the county seat of Branch county, running westerly on the most direct and eligible route through the seats of justice of St. Joseph and Cass counties to the mouth of the St. Joseph river. Another from White Pigeon by Prairie Ronde and Kalamazoo to Grand Rapids. "A road from Adamsville on the most direct and eligible route to the Paw Paw river at or near the center of Van Buren county," and many others.
To open and improve these roads the territorial and later the state government made liberal appropriations from the reserve of internal im-
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provement lands. For example, the legislature in 1848 appropriated three thousand acres for the purpose of opening and improving a road (authorized in 1840), "commencing at some point at or near the north bank of the river St. Joseph, in the vicinity of the village of St. Joseph, thence running in an easterly direction on the most eligible route to the village of La Grange, formerly called Whitmanville, in Cass county."
In the late forties, at the beginning of the railroad era in this part of the west, the "plank road" had a brief reign of favor as a means of internal communication. Many companies were incorporated by the state to construct such roads with the privilege of operating them as toll roads. The only one constructed for any distance in Cass county was planned to connect Niles and Mottville via Edwardsburg. The company was incorporated in 1849, with capital stock authorized at $100,000. Only five miles of the proposed road was built, between Niles and Edwardsburg. Such a road was a great improvement for the time. Much heavier loads could be hauled over the plank roads than over the soil roads, 'and they helped greatly in the development of the country. Had not the railroads at about the same time begun to net- work the country, the plank road would have been no doubt adopted as a solution of the transportation problem. After the railroads came all was changed; old centers were abandoned, new centers were formed, the markets were brought nearer the farmer's home, distances were shortened, marketing made easier, and the development of the country was wonderfully accelerated.
In a fair consideration of the means of communication which the county has employed, the stage coach must be included - the old "twice- a-week" stage coach. It was a slow mode of travel, but the passengers had a good time. The rate of speed in pleasant weather and with good roads was perhaps seven or eight miles an hour, and the average cost was perhaps five cents a mile. These vehicles have been forgotten as completely as the days they represented. When the steam horse which at first plowed the water took to land in the east, the finest of the stages were taken west, and some of them as far as the Rockies, where the stage coach is even yet not unknown. But the coach and the type of life it represented are gone forever from this part of the country.
Sixty years ago, however, the residents of Edwardsburg and other points along the old Chicago road, on hearing the blast of the driver's horn as the stage topped the hill to the east of town, hailed the event as a break in pioneer monotony and with one accord assembled about
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the stage station to welcome the arrival. No one who ever witnessed such a scene would forget the excitement and the deep interest that attended every detail of this little drama. The stage brought the latest news from the outside world. brought the newspapers, brought the mails. The stage put the people in connection with the great world, and when, the horses having been changed and the passengers again embarked, it disappeared on the prairie and then in the woods to the west, the isola- tion of the community was again complete until the coach came again. All this gives us an idea of the life of those days, which hardly seems real to us now when we are in direct and constant communication with all parts of the world.
This is the description of one of the oldl "Concord" stage coaches as described by a writer in the former history of Cass county: "You can fancy this ancient vehicle - a black painted and deck-roofed hulk -starting out from Detroit, with its load of passengers, swinging on its thorough-braces attached to the fore and hind axles, and crowded to its fullest capacity. There was a boot projecting three or four feet behind for luggage; an iron railing ran around the top of the coach where extra baggage or passengers were stowed as occasion required. The driver occupied a high seat in front : under his feet was a place for his traps and the mail; on each side of his seat was a lamp, firmly fixed. to light his way by night; inside of the coach were three seats which would accommodate nine passengers. You can imagine the stage coach, thus loaded. starting out at the 'get ape' of the driver, as he cracks his whip over the heads of the leaders, when all four horses spring to their work, and away goes the lumbering vehicle, soon lost to sight in the woods, struggling along the road, lurching from side to side into deep ruts and often into deeper mud holes."
Edwardsburg was a junction point on the Chicago road at which a branch line of stages went toward Niles. The first stage coaches in Cass county are said to have passed through in 1830 upon the Chicago road and this branch. At first two stages went over the road each week, but trips were being made tri-weekly before the Black Hawk war sus- pended operations entirely in 1832. In 1833 a new line of stages was established between Detroit and Chicago. The route was from Detroit via Ypsilanti, Jonesville, Coldwater river, White Pigeon, Edwardsburg and Niles. Teams were changed about every twelve miles. By subse- quent changes in ownership this line became the "Western Stage Com- pany."
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In 1835, on account of the great increase in immigration and gen- eral travel. it was found necessary to put on daily stages. These were almost invariably crowded, and the company was compelled to put on a double line before the season was over. Even then the agents were sometimes obliged to hire extra teams and common wagons in which to convey passengers. The most desirable seats in the stages were fre- quently sold at a heavy premium by speculators. The stage companies upon this direct through line'to Chicago were very liberally patronized and grew rich. They flourished until the railroad superseded the "Concord."
RAILROAD ERA.
But the chief developer and re-arranger of civilization is the rail- road. At a time when the relations of the railroads to the individual citizen, the civic community and the country at large bulk so large in public attention and discussion, it is needless to describe the importance of the railroad as an institution of modern life. The coming of the rail- road to this part of the west marked the end of the period of pioneer development and the beginning of the era of material progress in which we are still living.
When Cass county was first settled the pioneers had no intimation of the revolutionary changes in transportation and consequently all departments of industry and methods of living that would be effected by the railroad. It will be remembered that the first railroad in the United States - several miles in length only - was constructed in 1826, almost coincidentally with the first settlement in Cass county. In 1830, after the tide of immigration had resulted in the organization of the county, there were only twenty-three miles of railroad in operation in the United States. Hence, at that time the people of Cass county could hardly have looked forward to any time in the near future when they could anticipate using railroad transportation as a common facility.
But by the year 1835 the railroad age in the United States had been fairly inaugurated, with over a thousand miles in operation, and the lines increasing at a phenomenal rate. By this time the fever of railroad building had penetrated the middle west, and the subject was thenceforth one of increasing importance among all classes.
It was a long while, however, before the railroad actually canie this far west. In the meantime the demands of the people for improved transportation resulted in the agitation of canal construction and the
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opening of the waterways of commerce. Canal building in the middle west reached its fullest extent during the late thirties and the forties, and for a time the canal and the railroad competed on even terms.
The only convenient water way ever utilized by the people of Cass county for transportation was the St. Joseph river. The early settlers were compelled to haul in wagons their surplus wheat and corn and other products to some point on this stream, such as Niles, and thence "ark" them to Lake Michigan. for carriage by lake vessels to the mar- kets of the world. Several years before the advent of the railroad, the first steamboat began plying on the St. Joseph, as the forerunner of the considerable fleet which up to the present day has navigated on the lower courses of that stream.
The only serious plan for bringing this waterway into more useful relation to Cass county was that discussed at a meeting held in Ed- wardsburg, February, 1836, to consider the project of constructing a canal from Constantine to Niles. Such a canal would have crossed south central Cass county, and would have been a short cut across the great are made by the river in its bend into Indiana. Had the railroad era not been so near, this canal would doubtless have been constructed at some time, and would have been of inestimable advantage to the development of Cass county.
But a majority of those present at the Edwardsburg meeting fav- ored, even then, the idea of a railroad rather than a canal. The result was that the friends of the enterprise secured the passage of an act by the legislature, March 26, 1836, incorporating the Constantine and Niles Canal or Railroad Company, with a capital stock fixed at $250.000. The company was empowered to construct either a canal or railroad between the termini mentioned in its name and charter. The first di- rectors were William Meek, George W. Hoffman, Wells T. House, Watson Sumner, John G. Cathcart, Edward N. Bridge, J. C. Lanman, Jacob Beeson and Vincent L. Bradford. This enterprise ended in the storm of financial disaster that overtook the country in 1837, and it is not certain that even a survey of the route of the proposed canal or railroad was made.
Such was the only canal building ever attempted in this county. Already the attention of the people was directed to the advance of the railroads from the east. In 1832 the territorial council of Michigan had incorporated the Detroit and St. Joseph Railroad Company. The company was authorized to build a single or double track railroad from
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Detroit to St. Joseph by way of the village of Ypsilanti and the county seats of Washtenaw. Jackson, Calhoun and Kalamazoo counties, and to run cars on the same "by the force of steam. of animals, of any mechanical or other force, or of any combination of these forces"; was bound to begin work within two years from the passage of the act. to build thirty miles of track within six years, to complete half of the road within fifteen years, and to finish the whole of it within thirty years, under penalty of the forfeiture of its franchises.
The route was surveyed, work was begun at the eastern end. but before the set period of six years had expired Michigan had become a state. With its new dignity of statehood. Michigan was most zealous in fostering enterprises of internal improvement, not merely opening the way for the exertion of private or corporate effort, but even going to the extent of constructing under state auspices and appropriations from the public treasury the railroad and other highways and public utilities.
March 20, 1837, an act of the legislature was approved that pro- vided for the construction of three railroads across the whole breadth of its territory, to be called the Northern, Central and Southern rail- mads. The Central was to run from Detroit to the mouth of the St. Joseph. The act also provided for the purchase of the rights and prop- erty of companies already established, and especially those of the Detroit and St. Joseph Company. The sum of $550.000 was appropriated for the survey and making of the three roads. $400.000 of which was set apart for the Central. The legislature also authorized a loan of five million dollars for railroad construction.
The commissioners of Internal Improvements were thus provided with funds for the carrying out of this stupendous undertaking. But the building began in a period of industrial depression. unlooked for obstacles hindered the progress of the work, and when the year 1846 came the Central had been completed only to Kalamazoo. while the Southern's western operating terminal still tarried at Hillsdale. Public opinion as to the feasibility of railroad construction by the state seems to have changed in the meanwhile, and by an act of the legislature in the early part of 1846 an entire change of policy was effected.
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