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INCIDENTS IN THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE SAGINAW VALLEY BY JUDGE ALBERT MILLER
Its name would hardly indicate its location at the present day, but at the time it was located it passed through the northern tier counties in which there were any settlements except the sparse and isolated
ones in Saginaw, Mackinaw and Chippewa counties. In order to give some idea of what was considered northern Michigan ten years after the location of the road referred to, I will state that in a sectional contest for the election of a United States senator, the north, south. and west each presented a candidate. All the senators and representatives from the counties north of the tier through which the Central railroad passes, and east of the meridian line and Clinton and a part of Ingham county west of it, marshalled themselves as champions of northern Michigan under the name of "Northern Rangers, " led by Charles P. Bush, then of Livingston county. They constituted less than one-third of the membership.
The Northern railroad not having so many interested advocates as the Central and Southern lines, was not prosecuted with the same vigor; but there must have been large appropriations made in an early day, for in 1841, after much labor in grubbing and clearing the line had been done, there was an unexpended balance of appropriations of $60,000 which the legislature of that year ordered to be expended in constructing a wagon road on the line of the proposed railroad. I think the whole of that balance could not have been available for that purpose, for but a small portion of the line was passable as a wagon road when, in 1848, the legislature made an appropriation of 20,000 acres of internal improvement lands to continue the work.
Michigan
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