He was particularly interested in the area surrounding Clam Lake (Cadillac). In the summer of 1869 George Mitchell started north from Grand Rapids to explore the proposed route of the G.R. Congressman, founded a bank in Kendallville, and fortuitously for Cadillac, a G.R. William was a man of considerable influence. Mitchell was the youngest son of William Mitchell from Kendallville, Indiana. However, that section of the original route would soon change.Īn established Cummer and Sons logging camp, c. The originally planned route would take the railroad between Little Clam Lake (now Lake Cadillac) and Big Clam Lake (now Lake Mitchell) west of the present site of Cadillac. The war and other factors delayed construction, but finally in 1867 the first track was laid. & I.) was awarded a grant to build the railroad from Grand Rapids to the Straights of Mackinaw. The Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad (G.R. Many railroads were built for the money to be made from the sale of the land not because of anticipated operating profits. The usual grant gave the railroad alternate sections of land, amounting to half of all the acreage, for a distance of six miles on either side of the railroad right-of-way. Earlier, in 1850, Congress passed the first land grant act to encourage economic development. Everyone knew that after the war, railroads would open up the state's interior. Even before the war, Michigan's coastal cities were shipping large quantities of pine.
Northern Michigan was a vast reservoir of raw material for the building industry. Small villages would be transformed into cities and cities into burgeoning urban areas. The North was on the verge of the great machine tool revolution that would create an industrial society and mass production economy. Sections of the South were devastated and its agricultural lands lay to waste, but the West was ripe for opening. The Civil War had not restored the old Union of 1860 rather, a whole new nation had been born. Some of them were railroad surveyors the others, land-lookers, were scouting out choice pine lands for speculative purchase. While the new Grand Rapids-to-Traverse City state road was opening up the western side of Wexford County to settlement in the mid-1860's, a handful of men were prowling the hills on the eastern side of the county for different reasons. (photo courtesy of the Wexford County Historical Society) Men and horses at a timber harvesting site, c.
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