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Well, now we have stopped at Ace #4! The railroad has played an important part in making Ann Arbor such a successful town. By the mid-1830s businesses were expanding and needed a way to get their crops to markets outside of the city for sale and shopkeepers, wanting to keep up with the latest fashions, needed a way to bring goods into the growing town.
The first horse drawn railroad car was put into operation in 1836. Caleb Clark, an attorney living in Ann Arbor in 1841 wrote a letter to his friend George Nesmith on July 9, 1841. He did a great job of describing what Ann Arbor looked like when the railroad first came through town:
"Washtenaw County in which I reside is about 24 miles square - has about 22,000 inhabitants, and is mostly under good cultivation - and has much wealth. The town from which I write - has a large population of wealthy farmers - it is 40 miles west from Detroit with a railroad between the two places on which the journey is made in two or three hours. In the village are 2,200 people, a courthouse better than the one in Harschill, four good churches, the State University which when finished will be the noblest in the western states..."
While a lot of people in the city thought the railroad was a good idea, others weren’t quite so happy about it. Farmers in rural areas didn’t like train because they were loud, dirty, and often unsafe. Their cows and sheep would wander onto the tracks and get hurt. But the majority supported the railroad. Look at the poster to the left? What does it tell you about how people felt when the first major steam locomotive chugged into town?
Just to Think About: