This cache is on Kent County road right of where the abandoned Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad right of way crosses it, near the site of the round table and engine house for the Lowell and Hastings Railroad. Please do NOT record the milepost (mp) value from the cache log sheet in your log or in an image attached to your log. This is for an upcoming challenge.
"Postcard image courtesy of Michigan Railroad History (RRHX), Alan Loftis Collection"
"Eastbound" Pere Marquette train facing west at the depot, Lowell, Michigan.
Lowell:
The first white settler, a Frenchman named Danial Marsac, established a trading post in 1931 on the south bank of the Grand River, near the site of the depot, at what would become Segwun. He established trade with the Ottawa Indians. In 1847, Marsac purchased land on the north side of the river and platted Dansville. A post office was first established and named Lowell, for the township, on June 17th, 1851. In 1854, the town was re-platted as Lowell, and incorporated as a village in 1861. The village of Segwun, at the original location of the trading post, was platted on October 26th, 1863. By 1864, the village of Lowell had a population around 800 and contained a dozen stores, a pair of hotels, two saw mills, an iron foundry, a flour mill, three churches and a school. The village of Segwun eventually became part of Lowell.
Railroads:
Lowell is at the confluence of two rivers, the Flat and the Grand, and was at the crossing of two railroads, the Grand Trunk Western and the Chesapeake and Ohio. The GTW and its predecessors was an east-west line from Detroit to Grand Haven. The C&O, which ran north-south through quite a bit of eastern Kent County, was actually an east-west line from Grand Rapids to Saginaw. The two rail lines arrived thirty years apart.
Lowell and Hastings Railroad:
The second rail line to reach Lowell was the Lowell and Hastings Railroad, which arrived in 1887. The L&H got its start in 1883 when the Kalamazoo, Lowell and North Michigan Railroad was incorporated as a 3' gauge line to build a 68 mile long line from Kalamazoo, via Hastings and Lowell to Smyrna. The line was never constructed. The rights to the proposed line were sold the Hastings, Lowell and Northern Michigan on August 29th, 1883 (north of Hastings), and on December 31st, 1884 to the Chicago, Kalamazoo and Saginaw (south of Hastings). The HL&NM was incorporated on May 18th, 1883 to build the 32 miles from Hastings to Smyrna, as a standard gauge line. The HL&NM was, in turn, sold to the Lowell and Hastings Railroad on May 31st, 1887.
The L&H had a more modest goal of connecting Hastings with Lowell. Construction was completed and the line opened in December, 1887, on the segment from Freeport to Lowell. The line was graded to the south edge of Freeport, but was never extended to Hastings. On May 1st, 1899, the L&H was sold to the Grand Rapids, Belding and Saginaw Railroad, which extended the line from Lowell to Belding, opening that line on January 1st, 1900, under control of the Pere Marquette Railroad. The PM purchased the GRB&S outright in 1903. The line north of Elmdale, to Belding, Greenville, Stanton, Edmore, and points east became part of the Pere Marquette main line between Grand Rapids and Saginaw, and saw heavy traffic for several decades.
"Map by A.G. Hudley, 2014, using Google Earth and Google Maps Engine"
Map showing railroad locations in and around Lowell, some current, some abandoned.
The portion of the original L&H between Elmdale and Freeport was abandoned in 1935. In 1947, the PM became part of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad. The C&O was merged into CSX Transportation in 1987. The line was removed between Greenville, through Edmore to Elwell in 1988. The remainder, Elmdale to Greenville was sold to the Mid-Michigan Railroad whose headquarters were in the Greenville C&O Depot. In 2007, all but the segment from Lowell to Malta (across the Grand River from Lowell) was abandoned. The portion from Greenville to Lowell was purchased by the Fred Meijer Flat River Valley Trail and is in the beginning stages of being improved for bicycling and hiking.
Sources:
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