Postcard image courtesy Michigan Genealogy on the Web, Ionia County. Click on the image
Detroit, Lansing and Northern, later Pere Marquette Depot in Ionia.
Ionia:
In 1833, Samuel Dexter led a group of sixty-two people, including six families and five single men, from New York to what would become Ionia, and established the Dexter Colony. The colony bartered with the Odawa Indians, purchasing crops and huts from them.
Mr. Dexter built a saw mill that year, west of the current Armory, using water from a creek to power it. The settlement grew and was platted 1841, incorporated as a village in 1865, and as a city in 1873, in part due to the coming of the railroads.
Railroads:
Two railroad companies served the growing community. The Detroit & Milwaukee Railroad arrived first in Ionia in 1857. The second to arrive was the Ionia & Lansing Railroad in December, 1869.
Ionia and Lansing Railroad:
The Ionia and Lansing Rail Road Company was incorporated on November 13th, 1865 with the purpose to own 34 miles of railroad line from Lansing to Ionia. The articles of incorporation were amended on January 13th, 1869 to with a new goal of a 125 mile line terminating at the mouth of the Pentwater River. Construction began in 1869 and the line opened between Lansing and Portland on November 18th and reached Ionia in December of that year. In 1870, the I&L was extended northwest to Kidd(ville), bypassing Belding, and on to Greenville.
On March 16th, 1871, the I&L, along with the Detroit, Howell and Lansing Railroad was consolidated by new owners into the Detroit, Lansing & Lake Michigan Railroad. The DL&LM extended the line from Greenvile to Howard City by the end of November, 1871. That is as far as the line was ever built.
"Postcard image courtesy Michigan Genealogy on the Web, Ionia County. Click on the image."
Detroit, Lansing and Northern, later Pere Marquette Car Shops in Ionia
In 1876 the DL&LM, in receivership, was reorganized as part of the Detroit, Lansing & Northern Railroad. The DL&N built is main shops in Ionia and had a large roundhouse on the property. The 1891 plat map of a portion of the rail corridor through Ionia shows the location of the DL&N Depot, car shops and roundhouse, shaded in blue.
"Atlas of Ionia County, Michigan, J.B. Beers & Co., 1891, UofM Digital Library."
1891 plat of Ionia rail corridor. D&M/DGH&M/GTW in lime green, I&H/DL&N/DGR&W/PM/C&O in blue.
In 1896 the DL&N was reorganized as the Detroit, Grand Rapids and Western Railroad. On January 1, 1899 , the DGR&W and several others lines became part of the Pere Marquette Railroad . Part of that merger was a newly constructed line from Lowell to Belding, connecting with a short branch from Kidd(ville). This new line became the PM main from Grand Rapids to Saginaw, making the Ionia to Greenville line redundant. The PM moved the shop facilities out of Ionia to Wyoming in 1923. The PM abandoned the line between Warden (west Ionia) to Kidd(ville) in 1942. The remainder of the PM was officially absorbed by its owner, the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad, in 1947. In 1981, the C&O, then part of Chessie System, filed to abandon the portion of the original I&L from Eagle to Ionia (including Warden), and it was abandoned by 1983 from Portland to Ionia.
Sources:
Detroit, Lansing & Lake Michigan
Detroit, Lansing and Northern
Pere Marquette
Chesapeake & Ohio
Michigan Railroad Lines. Meints, Graydon M. Michigan State University Press, © 2005.
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