Railroads

The Michigan Internal Improvements program of the 1830s spawned the state's early railroad program and canal projects. Officials chartered private corporations to build railroads to connect all the important cities and villages in the state.

The first railroad authorized in Macomb County was designated as the Romeo and Mount Clemens Railroad Company. It was incorporated in 1833 with a capital stock of $150,000. It was limited to six years for building, and its charter lapsed.

The Detroit and Shelby Railroad Company was the third of only five railroads built from the original pre-1837 charters, which numbered 21. It was incorporated on March 7, 1834, and began operation in September 1839 to connect Campus Martius in Detroit with Utica's settlement or Leech's Mills in Shelby Township.

Poles strapped on to logs made up the road's rails, and the coaches were to be operated by horsepower. Fantastic visions of success inaugurated this road's opening with a three-story hotel and hopes for continued local growth because of this project and the Clinton-Kalamazoo Canal.

Unfortunately, the first car that started on the railroad's opening day failed to reach Detroit as within five miles of an awaiting crowd at Campus Martius, the strapped rails in the roadbed spread, and the omnibus car slid into Conner's Creek.

The line ceased operation in 1844. On March 18, 1848, the legislature changed the line’s name to the Detroit, Romeo and Port Huron Railroad. This name change did not revive the railroad. It was later extended to Bay City and became the Detroit Bay City Railroad.

It was not until 1859 that the Detroit and Canada Grand Trunk Junction Railroad was built through Macomb County. It ran as an essential line connecting with the Michigan Central station in west Detroit to the extensive Grand Trunk line to the west.

In 1869, the Michigan Air Line, Macomb County's second railroad, was built from Ridgeway (now Lenox Township) to Romeo. It was later extended through Washington and Shelby townships to Pontiac.

In 1871, the Detroit-Bay City Railroad connected the western part of Macomb County to the outside world. It became part of the Michigan Central System in 1928 and is operated today by Conrail. This railroad follows the right-of-way established by the old strap railroad company 30 years before.

After removing the tracks, the Grand Trunk line in northeast Shelby Township converted into the Macomb Orchard Trail. The Macomb Orchard Trail runs 24 miles from Richmond to Shelby Township, where it crosses Dequindre Road south of 24 Mile Road and connects to the Clinton River Trail in Rochester Hills to the Paint Creek Trail in Lake Orion.

Shelby Township roads

As southeast Michigan and Macomb County have grown and evolved, the way residents move around the area has changed dramatically.

From birch bark canoes and steamboats to horses, trains, and the Detroit Interurban transportation evolved until the end of the 19th century. Then the "horseless carriage," or automobile, forever changed the way people of Michigan and the world get around.

Per Edwin Tatem, a former highway engineer for the Road Commission of Macomb County, "original roads were based on trails created by the Indians.”

When French settlers arrived in southeast Michigan in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, they developed and combined the narrow American Indian trails with spiraling road paths. Following the War of 1812, British influence changed some aspects of the system as "roads" formed to connect forts in Michigan.

"They laid out a quasi-grid pattern that went from Detroit into Macomb County," Tatem said.

When officials surveyed the Michigan Territory in the 1820s and 1830s, baseline and meridian demarcations and town and range lines established the section lines and boundaries of modern townships.

The system allowed the natural implementation of mile roads and other travel ways along the section lines' designated boundaries. There were pre-established routes that continued to evolve.

"Principal highways were radiating from downtown Detroit and counties through the state," Tatem said. "Certain trails that were predominantly (American) Indian trails were further developed. For example, Gratiot was a trail from Detroit to Port Huron while Woodward ran from Detroit to Pontiac. Grand River went to Grand Rapids."

As roads developed in the state, support began to grow for some form of organized road construction.

Early roads were rough, uneven and no more than crude paths through the woods over stumps and through swamps. They allowed settlers to travel into the state's interior and aided farmers in transporting crops and livestock to market.

"Highway development in the county itself, like the mile roads, formed under a territorial administration," Tatem said. "Later on, there were plank roads where they put planks down to have roads so carriages could travel. They were supposed to be 16-feet wide and be a smooth, permanent road."

For evidence of this heritage, Macomb County is home to Romeo Plank Road.

A labor system and tax structure evolved to fund the new roads to implement road construction and maintenance.

"People who lived along the roads could pay the tax, or they could actually do physical labor on the road themselves," Tatem said.

Into the 20th century, the invention and continued evolution of the automobile facilitated the state highway department's creation to handle major roads in Macomb County and throughout the state.

"They also were dealing with state trunk line roads. County road commissions then developed to handle the local roads within their jurisdictions,” Tatem said.

While many city streets were brick or concrete, routes outside the urban areas were still muddy two-tracks, making automobile travel more of an adventure than a routine commute.

In metro Detroit, crews built the world's first mile of rural concrete highway in 1909 on Woodward Ave. between 6 Mile and 7 Mile roads in Detroit.

"In the Depression era, there was not much work for road projects,” Tatem said. “Then around World War II, around the area, they began improving the infrastructure to move war materiel. They started to get more money for construction because of legislation that gave them federal funding to protect the country for military purposes."

As a result of that war spending, crews built the first freeway in southeast Michigan.

"The Davison Freeway, a mile road between Woodward all the way over to what we know today as I-75, was built in 1942 in front of Chrysler because they were building tanks," Tatem said.

After World War II, Act 51 in 1951 set up the road system we have today.

"It applied to all the roads in the state today," he said. "The motor vehicle highway fund was established, and we are able to fund a lot of the projects we have in terms of the freeway system and the road system that we have today. They were able to build the mile roads, Gratiot and M-53."

Looking around Macomb County and Shelby Township's streets, Clendon "Dick" Mason can see a lot had changed since the days when he first joined the Shelby Township Police Department as a part-time officer in 1956.

"Most of the roads were gravel, and Van Dyke was two lanes all the way down into Warren," he said. "If someone stopped and wanted to make a left-hand turn, you'd be late for work."

Mason said that all the mile roads in Shelby Township were gravel. "Hayes between Hall Road and 21 Mile, I remember as being a two-track," he said.

"Most intersections were governed by stop signs, but I believe there was a traffic light at 23 Mile Road and Van Dyke, but it only worked five days a week, and it went to a blinker after 6 p.m. and on the weekends."

Traffic, he said, was similar in some respects to that of today. “There were fewer cars, but there were also fewer roads," he said. "If you wanted to go from point A to point B on a Friday night, you had to fight traffic."

Mason said that in some areas of the state, there were no speed limits. "That wasn't so much in the county, but throughout the state," he said.

The township was sparsely populated north of 24 Mile Road or east of Van Dyke Ave. There would often be large lapses in time between cars traveling down the roads.

"In the late '50s - I think it was '58 or '59, the Free Press delivery man broke down on 24 Mile Road around 2 a.m.," Mason said. "I was the first person to go by there a little after 8 a.m. to see him."

For the first 40 years of the 20th century, Shelby and Sterling townships boasted farms as far as the eye could see.

Following World War II, however, the farms of the area began to give way to subdivisions. City dwellers from Detroit started to migrate to the north along the major traffic corridors of Van Dyke Ave. to develop the northern suburbs.

In the 1950s and 60s, Warren developed a trend that carried into today's Sterling Heights in the 1960s and 70s.

Shelby Township took its turn in the 1980s and 1990s, and the trend continues north into southern Washington Township.

By 1975, traffic had reached a point where township officials and police administration realized they needed more police to handle the township roadways. The township hired 14 officers to staff its new Traffic Enforcement Bureau.

Since then, the township's population swelled from 38,939 residents in 1980 to 83,065 in 2020. The township committed to improving and expanding its roadways to accommodate the population increase.

Since 2008, the township worked with the Macomb County Department of Road and the Michigan Department of Transportation for more than $40 million in new and improved roads, including the $20 million Shelby Township Road Program of 2019 and 2020.

A large part of the project was the $2.3 million expansion of the 23 Mile Road/Shelby Parkway intersection to accommodate traffic from the M-53 Expressway. The intersection expansion and improvement accommodate commercial truck traffic and 1,700 workers in more than 1.3 million square feet of industrial and manufacturing space in the area.

Other notable advances of the time included the widening of Van Dyke Ave. to a five-lane road throughout the township and increased capacity for Hayes, Schoenherr and Dequindre roads.

Source --  JON OTTMAN  SOURCE NEWSPAPER  10-31-03