Michigan Rails: Building to Prosperity, 1830-1909

Michigan's first railroad companies laid rails in a peninsula that looked very different from the one we know today. The companies that won charters from the territorial government in the early 1830s faced some serious challenges. Investors were scarce, even for the companies that had been allowed to create their own banks. Those who did secure funding then had to deal with an uneven landscape covered in swamps and forests that was difficult and expensive to clear and grade for tracks. Little wonder that some charters went nowhere, not laying a single tie or rail, but towns across southern Michigan still competed to have a promised lines pass nearby. 

The first railroad company to have a line was the Erie & Kalamazoo, which may have been in service as early as 1836. The first railroad cars were pulled down the track by horses, but the Erie & Kalamazoo had a steam locomotive the following year.

In 1837, the new Michigan legislature proposed three rail lines to cross the state as part of an ambitious “internal improvements’ program. One proposed line would run from Monroe to New Buffalo, anticipating the “Michigan Southern” line, and a second would connect Detroit to St. Joseph, becoming the “Michigan Central." A third, “Northern” line would have run from Port Huron to Kent County but would be cancelled in 1840.

By 1846, the Central, Southern, Erie & Kalamazoo, Detroit & Pontiac, and other early railroad companies had laid over 250 miles of track in Michigan. Both the Michigan Central and the Michigan Southern had lines to Chicago by 1852. The Panics of 1854 and 1857 and the Civil War slowed progress for a while, but after the war railroads quickly spread throughout the state. By 1859, travelers could take the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada from Portland, Maine to Detroit, and then to Chicago by 1880. Meanwhile, in the Upper Peninsula, railroads carried iron and copper from mines to ports.   

In 1873, the state government created a commissioner to regulate the railroads and oversee safety inspections as well as freight and passenger rates. After another economic panic in 1873, railroad construction boomed, though it now faced resistance from farm and labor movements.

Long before the automobile, railroad cars were an early manufacturing success for Detroit. Both the Michigan Central and the Michigan Southern were building railroad freight cars by the 1850s, and entrepreneurs explored designs for sleeper and refrigerator cars. By the 1890s, firms like the Michigan-Peninsular Car Company and the Michigan Car Company employed thousands of workers.

By 1909, there were 9,059 miles of railroads in Michigan, an all-time high.

(Dunbar and May's Michigan and Meints' Railroads for Michigan were especially helpful for this exhibit. For details about these books and others, please see the References section below.)

Below are some other photographs related to Michigan's railroads in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Next to each caption you will find a link to the complete record on the website of the cultural institution that shared the photograph with Michigan Memories. You may find more information and context about the photograph there.

References

There are many online sources about the history of Michigan’s railroads, including:

• Michigan Department of Transportation. Michigan’s Railroad History, 1825-2014. A 2014 version of this work is available online. It has a timeline of important events, along with maps and illustrations. Brad Hazel offers additional commentary on the timeline on his website. 

• Central Michigan University Libraries. Interactive Michigan Railroad Map. This unique resource allows you to follow the routes of seven historical railway lines, depot by depot, across the state of Michigan. 

• Zielin, Lara. “All Aboard!” An article in the Bentley Historical Library’s magazine that features photographs from the Claude Thomas Stoner Photographs and Papers collection. 

There are also books and articles that provide a wealth of detail about our state’s railways. Some of the notable ones include: 

• Dunbar, Willis F and George S May. Michigan: A History of the Wolverine State, third revised edition. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995.

  • An important work for many topics about Michigan history. Railroads are mentioned throughout the book, but particularly in chapters, 12, 13, and 19.

• Elliott, Frank N. When the Railroad Was King, second edition. Lansing: Michigan Department of State, 1988. 
  • This long article first appeared in the December 1965 issue of the Historical Society of Michigan’s Michigan History magazine. Its emphasis is on the business history of railroads and the challenges faced by both private companies and the state government in creating the first rail lines. 
• Meints, Graydon M. Railroads for Michigan. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013
  • An extensive account of Michigan’s railroads with a wealth of detail covering the first attempts to create rail lines in the 1830s through the rise and then slow decline of railroads up to the year 2000. This book was particularly helpful in organizing this exhibit. 

• Meints, Graydon M. Pere Marquette: A Michigan Railroad System Before 1900. East Lansing, Michigan State University Press, 2020.
  • A close look at one particular railroad that went through many changes even before the twentieth century. The book will be especially helpful to anyone interested in railroads on the western side of the state. 

Michigan Memories also has resources about railroads that you might not expect. For anyone interested in the evolution of the steel rail we have a report on “Investigations on iron and steel rails, made in Europe in the year 1873,” by Thomas Egleston who wanted to know why rails were breaking and causing dangerous accidents.  We also have a publication from 1868 by the Booth company that promoted their new patent for an iron and steel rail which they claimed was superior to all earlier designs.  

Sources

The images above come from the following collections:

1. “Currency” (Five Dollar Note). In the Transportation collection, Detroit Historical Society. https://www.detroithistorical.org/learn/online-research/collection/archive/currency-6  Accessed April 7, 2026.
2. "MC 44: Michigan Central, Engine 20 STAG HOUND, Lowell 1854; HS1282." In the digital collection Bentley Historical Library: Bentley Image Bank. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/b/bhl/x-hs1282/hs1282  University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed April 07, 2026.
3. “Pennsylvania Railroad locomotive.” In the Robinson Studio Collection (Coll 125) – Grand Rapids History Center. https://digital.grpl.org/Detail/objects/116482  Accessed April 7, 2026.
4. “Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad.” In the Grand Rapids Public Library photographs collection (Coll. 054) – Grand Rapids History Center. https://digital.grpl.org/Detail/objects/10656  Accessed April 7, 2026
5. “Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad.” In the Grand Rapids Public Library photographs collection (Coll. 054) – Grand Rapids History Center. https://digital.grpl.org/Detail/objects/10654  Accessed April 7, 2026
6. “L.S. & M.S.R.R. Depot, Lansing, Michigan.” In the Caterino Postcard Collection, Capital Area District Libraries Local History Online. https://cadl.catalogaccess.com/archives/5848  Accessed April 7, 2026.
7. "Concord, Mich. railroad station scene; BL005844." In the digital collection Bentley Historical Library: Bentley Image Bank. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/b/bhl/x-bl005844/bl005844  University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed April 07, 2026.
8. "MC 41: Michigan Central, Engine 86, White Sea at Ypsilanti, early 1870s; HS1281." In the digital collection Bentley Historical Library: Bentley Image Bank. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/b/bhl/x-hs1281/hs1281  University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed April 07, 2026.
9. "MC 62: Michigan Central, Depot at Cheboygan; HS1284." In the digital collection Bentley Historical Library: Bentley Image Bank. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/b/bhl/x-hs1284/hs1284  University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed April 07, 2026.
10. "Railroad map of Michigan prepared for the Commissioner of Railroads by O.W. Gray & Son." In the digital collection UM Clark Library Maps. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/clark1ic/x-002874361/39015091881063  University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed April 15, 2026.