I have done a fair amount of work with aerial photos over the last decade (or
so) and I have noticed that there are still visible remnants of what used to
be - for example, if you know what you're looking for, you can still see the
old railroad bed that wraps around the bend in the Huron between Tubbs road and
Delhi (the track was torn out and the bend was bridged before 1860). Other
related road cuts are still visible (abandoned in the 1800's when the tracks
were straightened). Features of this type are being lost to new housing
developp-ment and other construction. I am interested in putting together a
listing of these features and possibly photographing them before they all
disappear. Are there any that you know of? Any favorites?

21 responses total.

Ken Josenhans and I explored Whitmore Lake Road not long ago and tried to
see how it connected to Main Street before US-23 was built.  The old bridge
over the Huron River is still there (in a park now), and some of the old
pavement.  The pavement stops where apparently a lot of ground got dug up
for an Ann Arbor water supply project.  In theory, it's a straight shot from
there to the north end of Main Street, but there's a railroad track (with
a severely banked curve) and an apparently undisturbed woods in the way.  So
where was the road?

On an older note, folklore has it that there was a portage trail used by the
local Indians to carry canoes from the Red Cedar to the Looking Glass rivers,
through what is now East Lansing.  For at least some of its length, this
trail follows the spine of an esker -- logical, since that would offer the
safest and driest footing through what was then a swampy area.  A portion of
this esker and the trail along it still exists in Burcham Woods, immediately
behind the East Lansing Public Library, running northeast from the corner
of Grove Street and Library Lane.  Further northeast, the line of the trail
is picked up by a street called "Portage Path."

The electric railroads (streetcars and interurbans) that used to lace
Michigan left behind lots of traces.  Even now, the ridges in the pavement
along much of Packard shows where the streetcar ran down the middle of the
street; the curved cut-off at the corner of Hill and Washtenaw was also
part of a streetcar route.  In East Lansing, at the north end of M.A.C.
Avenue, the curve of the streetcar line as it turned east to Burcham Drive
is still quite visible in the pavement.  (The street has been repaved but
not reconstructed; the embedded rails and differences in roadbed always
show up again after the new paving material settles.)

Another sign of that same streetcar line along M.A.C. Avenue in East Lansing
came during the construction of the downtown hotel there.  At one point,
when the hotel site was a huge hole in the ground, a tremendous rainstorm
washed a lot of dirt away and undermined the streets around the hole.  A
lot of pavement from M.A.C. Avenue fell into the hole, but only up to a
point: the steel streetcar rail, embedded in the pavement, held the rest of
it up and kept the whole street from falling in.  The rail was quite
visible at the edge of the hole.

An interurban ran down Packard, between Ann Arbor & Ypsi.  There's
a photo of it in an Ann Arbor Observer awhile back in an article
on the old city of East Ann Arbor, written by one Janet Landman.

So where exactly was East Ann Arbor?  I read some articles in one of those
scrapbooks at the Ann Arbor Public Library that a group of people (including
the founder of Kerrytown) managed to take over East Ann Arbor in the 1950's
with the express purpose of accomplishing a merger with its neighbor to the
west.

The streetcar on Packard turned into an interurban line somewhere around
Stadium, connecting Ann Arbor with Ypsi and Detroit.

The center of East Ann Arbor was around Packard and Platt.  There was
a story about East Ann Arbor in a recent AA Observer.

I was thrilled when Packard got all torn up about 10 years ago, and you
could go and look at the tracks and all. The road is several feet thick,
with the pavement, bricks, track, and so on just laid on top of each other.

  Grand River Ave (US-16) used to run to Grand Rapids, and there also was
an interurban line that ran along with it. The (now) City of Novi got it's
name because of the interurban... no vi was stop #6 on the route to Lansing.
From what I have been able to put together, No 5 was Farmington, No 4 was
Redford, with perhaps 3 stops within the City of Detroit.

Doesn't Grand River run through to Grand Rapids anymore?

Sort of..  It jogs about a bit, but you can still take it most of the
way across the state..

  I was speaking in terms of US-16 used to. Gd. River still runs there, but
it's a lot easier to take I-96.

Re 5.  Packard was all torn up?  Does that mean the tracks have all
been removed? :-/

Re 6.  There were lots of interurban lines all over the state, but not
along Grand River Avenue, at least, not between Fowlerville and East
Lansing.

As to Novi, the name was given in the 1820's, long before there were
interurbans or even many railroads (Novi Township was organized under
that name before 1830, I'm pretty sure).  The "NO. VI" folktale about
the origin of the name was supposedly from stagecoach days, and it
has been disproven.  (Oh well.)

Re 7.  Grand River Avenue starts in Detroit and runs northwest to
Lansing and beyond.  Originally an Indian trail, later a plank toll
road, still later US-16, now mostly M-43.  From Lansing to Grand
Rapids, you can see how the highway veers off from the original line
of the Indian trail (which continues as a small local road for a
while).  By the time former US-16 gets to Grand Rapids, it's called
Cascade Road.

Sounds like there would be interest in the national organization called
the "Rails to Trails Conservancy" - buying or otherwise acquiring former
railroad rights of way and converting them to hiking and biking paths. 
There are a lot of these back east, but I don't know of a specific one in
Michigan.

Abandoning our rail lines is terribly shortsighted.  That being said,
though, there are lots of rail lines already abandoned which could make
excellent recreational trails.

Unfortunately, there is powerful and bitter opposition to this among
farmers and other adjoining property owners who argue that when the
rails are torn up, the right-of-way becomes theirs.  They also fear
that opening trails would bring crime and litter.

Once a rail line has been abandoned for a few months, it is very
difficult to reopen the right-of-way given all the stuff done by the
adjoining property owners.  Hence, the decision to make a public trail
should ideally be an integral part of the process of removing the track.
In Michigan, there may be no other way.

 re #11:  There are several such projects in Michigan..  The ones I know
of (actually they may all technically be part of the same one) are in
Western Michigan where they have converted some railroad right-of-ways
into bicycle trails.  I've never traveled along them but I've been told
they're quite nice in parts.  I recently heard of either a proposal or a
decision to undertake a couple more such projects.

The most famous one is the Kal-Haven Trail, which runs from Kalamazoo
to Grand Haven.  I just talked to a friend who lives in K'zoo that has
ridden it.  She says it's very nice.

  I believe there are some running through Oceana and Newaygo counties,
too.. (perhaps through White Cloud and Hart?)

When they were redoing main street & packard - about a week ago, you
could see what was under packard, at least at that end.  Under the
surface layers of asphalt, there was a layer of bricks and pretty clear
evidence that there *had* been rails (but the rails were no longer
present).  Underneath that was a layer of ties, and underneath that was
a concrete foundation, and underneath that was dirt.

Yeah, they dug down quite a ways...  Be glad you didn't have to wake
up for several mornings in a row with the thumping vibration of whatever
they used to break up all that concrete.  I thought our glassware was
going to vibrate right off the shelves...  
  Given where we live, it would be cool to have a train (passenger I
assume) running right by.  Or was it more of a trolley?

It was a trolley. There was an interurban trolley that ran from Ann Arbor,
along Packard all the way to Ypsilanti. The rails were paved over when
it stopped running. I remember seeing the rails where the asphalt had
eroded at the corner of Packard and Stadium 3 or 4 years ago. I would
assume those disappeared completely when they rebuilt Stadium there from
the roadbed up a couple of years ago.

There was a big trolley barn at the current site of Burns Park.
It burned up in a huge fire, but I can't remember the year
(the 30s maybe?). All of this trolley stuff was gone long before
I arrived, but its a cool part of AA's history.
(Especially for us railroad and trolley lovers. :-)

        Actually, I think it was near Burns Park, not in Burns Park.  If
you look on Lincoln just north of the park (and about a block away from my
house) there are a bunch of hosues that are much newer than the rest of
the houses in the neighborhood, and I've heard that that was where the
trolly barns were.  Also, that little connector between Washtenaw and Hill
that creates the island the Painted Rock is on was originally put there
because the trolleys couldn't handle the angle of the turn.

Interesting Steve, I'm sure you're right. A trolley line went up 
Lincoln to Hill. I never realized the cutoff was for the trolleys,
though. I remember reading somewhere that on Lincoln at Cambridge,
where there is a dip in Lincoln, hackers used to grease the tracks 
and then the trolley would get stuck there.

I can remember seeing the rails under Hill Street, some years ago, when
the street was torn up for repairs.

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