Cache:
The site of this cache is near the former settlement of Miller, Millers, or Miller's Station on the Grand Trunk Western Railroad. The cache is on rural road right-of-way. Please stay out of the farmer's field. This cache replaces GC4CKNW, which was muggled multiple times.
Photo courtesy of MiGenWeb - Montcalm County, Gerry Christensen Collection.
Miller's Station and Potato Market, about 1905
Millers Station:
According to the 1907 Michigan Gazetteer and Business Directory, Miller was a post office and flag station on the Grand Trunk Western Railroad. There was a general store. No population is listed. Miller was a potato shipping point. The railroad maintained a siding here into the 1950s.
The grade passes through the site east to west, paralleling Station Road on the south side. The depot stood on the south side of the tracks, east of Grow Road (southbound). When the rail line was abandoned, there were still some foundations visible at the site. Since that time, all signs of the site have been obliterated by farming. Today there is one house that existed when the railroad still stopped here.
Charles Conn Michigan Railroad Collection, Clarke Historical Library, Central Michigan University.
Depot and potato warehouse at Miller's Station.
Railroad:
In 1887-89, a railroad line originally known as the Toledo, Saginaw and Muskegon, was constructed between Ashley and Muskegon. Rails reached Carson City in September of 1887, Greenville in November of 1887, Cedar Springs and Muskegon by the end of the year. Construction continued in 1888 for ballasting, sidings and depots. On August 1st, 1888, a lease of the TS&M to the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada was completed. GTC later purchased the line outright. A mail and express train and a mixed train (with passenger service) was operated daily between Owosso (over the Toledo, Ann Arbor & Northern Michigan to Ashley) and Muskegon. The line was locally known as the GT version of the Turkey Trail because it meandered like a turkey and also because it allegedly never made money.
In 1928, GTC was merged with other Michigan Grand Trunk subsidiaries into the Grand Trunk Western, itself a subsidiary of the Canadian National Railway. In 1930, GTW secured trackage rights between Grand Rapids and Muskegon over the Pennsylvania Railroad (former Grand Rapids and Indiana) Muskegon Branch. Service on the Turkey Trail was reduced to way freights and mixed trains. In 1946, with heavy service operating over the PRR, the portion of the line between Greenville and Muskegon was abandoned.
Mixed train service continued leaving Durand, to Greenville and back each day until the end of 1955. On January 1st, 1956, this was reduced to a way freight turn daily. On January 11th, 1983, the last train left Greenville and the line was abandoned between Greenville and Carson City. The rails are still in place from Ashley to Carson City and were being occasionally operated from 1982 by the Tuscola and Saginaw Bay and since 2006, between Ashley and Middleton by the Great Lakes Central.
Map image drawn using Google Maps Engine by aghudley © 2014.
Route of the Toledo, Saginaw and Muskegon Railroad, also known as the Grand Trunk Turkey Trail.
Sources:
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