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In the nineteenth century, railroads had a tremendous impact on the development of Ann Arbor. Initially, railroads were used to transport goods, such as livestock, wool, and coal. Later, trains not only transported cargo, but provided passengers with the opportunity to visit and explore nearby towns and, through connections in Detroit, Chicago, and Toledo, the rest of the country. The tracks of two sets of railroad systems can still be found in the city. The Michigan Central Railroad Company, established in 1846, operated a line that ran across Michigan in an east-west direction. Ann Arbor was one of many stations along this line and was part of the route from Detroit to Chicago. This line linked Michigan to cities on the East Coast.
The Ann Arbor Railroad Company operated the line that ran through Michigan in a north-south direction, from Toledo, Ohio to Frankfort, Michigan and, via car ferry, across Lake Michigan. Its headquarters were located in Howell. Although the Ann Arbor Railroad Company no longer operates north of Ann Arbor, Claude Stoner, an optical engineer for the railroad, carefully documented its past in photographs. His images of railroad stations, trains, passengers, and employees vividly recall the role of the railroad in the everyday lives of Ann Arbor's early twentieth century residents. (see A Fictional Day in the Life of Claude Stoner with accompanying photographs.)
The first horse-drawn railcar operated in Michigan in 1836, and it was replaced by a locomotive a year later. The first major line built through Ann Arbor was constructed in 1878. The original station was a wooden structure, but in 1886 it was replaced with the stone building (right) that is now the Gandy Dancer restaurant. Over the next fifty years, the railroad continued to slowly expand and became a viable source of transportation. However, some Michigan residents initially did not welcome the railroad. It was loud, dirty, and often unsafe. Farmers in rural areas especially resisted it. Valuable livestock were often killed when they wandered onto the railroad tracks, and rural residents feared the invasion of their land and control. In the 1850s, some Michigan farmers stoned railroad cars and set local stations on fire. However, for most villages and towns, the arrival of the railroad was cause for great celebration.
This poster (left) advertises a celebration marking the completion of the Toledo Ann Arbor line in 1878. Indeed, the railroad proved worth celebrating; villages and towns without railroad connections gradually slipped into decline, unable to keep up with the expansions in trade that the railroad brought to other areas.
In the late 1800s, Ann Arbor's railroads grew in two main areas: freight and passengers. At first, railroads primarily transported cargo. The railroad brought in goods that Ann Arbor did not produce locally—coal, oil, concrete, meat and other foods, for example. The city shipped its surpluses, among them ice, grain, wool, and dairy products, to sale in neighboring towns and cities. Railroads were more cost effective than other forms of transportation, including shipping on the Huron River. While most trains ran without incident, railroad crashes were occasional, chilling events. Newspapers ran front-page articles with arresting photographs and first-hand interviews. Of the accidents that occurred near Ann Arbor, one of the most spectacular was the Huron Valley Bridge collapse of 1904, pictured below.
This picture shows why, in accidents like these, railroads often lost valuable cargo.
Train accidents were not the only safety concern of Ann Arbor residents, however. In 1902, the city council forced the Ann Arbor Railroad to elevate its tracks where they crossed major Ann Arbor streets "to such an altitude as to enable the public travel" underneath, instead of across the rails. The city argued that elevated crossings "would conduce to the general public convenience and safety." City officials hoped that this would cut down on the number of people and animals that trains injured.
Where tracks were not elevated, the Railroad employed crossing guards (left) to help control pedestrians, horse teams, and later automobiles at railroad crossings.
As railroads became more central to life in Michigan, the expansion of the University of Michigan and of Ann Arbor's population increased the demand for passenger travel. Both the Michigan Central Railroad and Ann Arbor Railroad Company began to operate trains for passengers only.
All kinds of people took the train for business and pleasure, and railroads began to publicize information, like this timetable (below), to help passengers plan their travels. However, it also helps historians understand where passengers came from, where they went, and how often they traveled.
No longer a luxury, railroads developed different classes of travel, with different priced tickets to accommodate the varieties of people traveling by rail. Nearly thirty passenger trains, carrying a total of over two hundred passengers, left Ann Arbor each day. Special trains were added during football season to bring in the thousands of people who attended University of Michigan games. (By contrast, fewer than six trains per day leave Ann Arbor now.)
Throughout the early twentieth century, the railroad business continued to expand. In 1932, railroads transported over 65% of the goods shipped in Michigan. Comparing it to the map from 1857, this map from 1929 (left) shows the vast expansion in the railroad industry across Michigan. At its peak during World War II, the Ann Arbor Railroad Company, only one of several railroad companies operating through Michigan, ran almost 300 miles of rails, ranging from Toledo, Ohio to Frankfort, Michigan and over water via car ferry to parts of Wisconsin and Michigan. The company owned as many as six car ferries, each longer than a football field, which transported entire trains across Lake Michigan.
Competition from the trucking industry and air travel and transport proved too much for the railroad in the post-war era. By the end of the 1960s, most railroad companies struggled to operate profitably. Automobiles and airplanes provided increasingly inexpensive and efficient alternatives for passenger travel. Trucks, which could travel to cities where there might not be railroad stations, were used to haul freight. Trucks or planes increasingly carried even mail service, which once depended on trains. The only goods left for the railroad were large, bulk shipments such as coal or grains. Travelers also opted for their private cars or airplanes to get from place to place. Cargo was also increasingly shipped by air, which was much faster than ground transportation.
As the railroad era drew to a close, many Ann Arbor residents reflected nostalgically on a once radically new form of transportation. When the Ann Arbor Railroad Company declared bankruptcy in 1976, some Ann Arbor residents regretted the loss. This article describes the likely effects of that change on Michigan residents, somewhat sentimentally remembering the history of the Ann Arbor Railroad. At the same time, though, the article expresses hope for the improvement in Railroad Services when the lines were to be taken over by ConRail. These hopes were unrealized, however; ConRail continued to struggle with ever-increasing costs of operation. In the 1970s, Darrell D. Powell, a former employee of the Ann Arbor Railroad Company, wrote several poems in memory of "Annie"—a nickname for the Ann Arbor Railroad Company. In his poem When I was Young Man, he describes growing up with the railroad and his attachment to a now outdated transportation system:
When I was a young man,
The Ann Arbor Railroad ran out front.
It was my whole world.
I would see trains come and go,
And return again with cars from different roads.I can remember when they did a lot of switching in Dundee.
The crews would switch box cars to Karner's Elevator,
And also switch some cars of coal.
The lovestock would take a car or two.
Then further down that same track, the tank cars were unloaded.
There was the shove to the Purina mill and Texaco.
Back they would come and again go across the river
for more switching.When the D. T. & I. owned the railroad, the cement cars
were brought into town also
to do some switching, sorting, and jocking around.
With the changes of ownership, and problems with the railroad,
and business that comes and goes,
the crews don't stop here anymore.
Oh they wave and toot as they go by.
But just to see all of those switch moves again—
Wouldn't that be a sight!
Today, Amtrak still operates a railroad station on the site of the former Michigan Central Railroad station for passenger trains. Although railroad travel is experiencing a small nostalgic resurgence, it no longer holds the central role of freight and passenger transportation that it once enjoyed.
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