The Streetcar and the Interurban Railway

Early transportation to and from the Michigan Agricultural College was arduous at best. “Students and state board members coming to the college in the early days from Detroit and vicinity traveled by rail to Jackson, thence by plank road to Eaton Rapids, and stage to Lansing.” Once in Lansing, the travelers would have to hire a driver to bring them the rest of the way by horse-drawn wagon, either along the Lansing–Howell Plank Road or along the Middletown East road, an unpaved lane that evolved into Michigan Avenue.¹

In 1885 the Lansing City Railway Company was formed and built one of its two original lines along Michigan Avenue from Washington Avenue to the Michigan Central Railway tracks—a distance of less than half a mile. The streetcar tracks were made of wood with strap-iron nailed on top, and the cars were pulled by horses. Over the next ten years the line was incrementally extended eastward, to the city limits (near Clemens Avenue) by 1888, then to the Half-way Stone and beyond. New ownership in 1890 converted to electric operation, dug up the wooden track and replaced it with heavier iron, and in 1892 reorganized as the Lansing City Electric Railway Company.²

This extension of the railway far past the outskirts of Lansing’s developed area was specifically due to the existence of the Agricultural College, and by 1895 it finally reached the west entrance of the school (now Beal Entrance). The following spring, having resolved to establish a women’s course at the school, the Board of Agriculture sent a committee consisting of President Jonathan Snyder, Secretary Ira Butterfield, and Professor Herman Vedder to urge the railway to extend its track “along the highway to the township line” at Abbot Road, to bring the terminus closer to the college buildings. However the committee were specifically asked not to allow the line to enter campus thanks to the “strong objection” of one board member (whom Beal left unnamed) who feared that the streetcar would bring an “undesirable human element” to the campus from Lansing, as well as allow easy access to Lansing’s saloons by college students.³

Whoever the objecting member was, it seems that he might have been replaced in the next round of board appointments in 1897 because when the railway continued the line along Michigan and Grand River Avenues, it ran the track onto campus near the old north entrance to the school (across from Evergreen Avenue) and terminated it midway between Faculty Row № 6 and Station Terrace—today, the site of Louise H. Campbell Hall. The first streetcar entered the grounds on Friday, November 19, 1897, and the College soon built a small but cozy waiting room alongside the track. Unsurprisingly, streetcar service direct to campus turned out to be an amenity that helped to spur the College’s first substantial increase in enrollment.⁴

The line soon continued onward. The Lansing & Suburban Traction Company, which acquired the Lansing City Electric in 1904, began to convert the streetcar line into an interurban line with larger and faster cars, and planned a major extension to the system. In February 1905 the company was granted a right-of-way from Horace and Clara Angell to lay track through College Grove along M.A.C. Avenue to North Street,^† where it made a wide turn to the east and headed out of town. By June, construction was completed to the resort area on the western shore of Pine Lake (now Lake Lansing). Lansing and East Lansing residents—and M.A.C. students—could take excursions to the lake and “enjoy ice cream and the cooling lake breezes after dancing or skating” in “the Casino,” a large wooden pavilion that the railway company built on the shore. The extension was immediately popular, and the last return trip of the weekend was always filled to capacity.⁵

The following year, 1906, the Michigan United Railways Company was formed as a consolidation of several rail lines throughout southern Michigan including the Lansing & Suburban. The M.U.R. continued to expand and upgrade the interurban, using a combination of overhead trolley wires (in cities and villages) and third rail (in rural areas). By 1911 the line reached all the way to Owosso and Corunna, a total distance of thirty-three miles from downtown Lansing. M.U.R. interurban cars departed from Lansing and Owosso every two hours from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., seven days a week.⁶

Meanwhile, on campus the old dead-end spur was converted into a turnaround loop in May 1907. This was in anticipation of the throngs of people who would soon arrive for the Semicentennial Celebration, and allowed local cars to quickly start their return trips to downtown Lansing. Although it was intended as a temporary modification, the loop remained in place until autumn 1924, when it was removed to open the way for a new, formal Abbot Entrance. (This removal was not without its controversy, but the three-way fracas between the state, city, and railway amounted to very little in the end.)⁷

As motor busses gained popularity and the state highway system developed, the interurban railway met its demise. Ironically, the M.U.R. contributed to its own end via its Southern Michigan Transportation Company affiliate, which began bus operations in 1925. While newspaper reports claimed “the electric roads can operate many of these bus lines as feeders and supplements to their railway business, [to] help instead of injure the electric traffic,” the S.M.T.C. acquired permits for services from Lansing that ran parallel to the M.U.R.’s electric lines to Owosso, St. Johns, and Jackson. As a direct result the Michigan United Railway, despite being “one of the best roads” and having a “physical plant that was superior to most other interurbans,” operated at a loss after 1925 and finally discontinued interurban service on all three lines, including the Lansing–Owosso line, in 1929. A successor Lansing Transportation Company provided local streetcar service between Lansing and the College for a few years, until a labor strike and bankruptcy led to its shutdown on April 15, 1933.⁸

The East Lansing city council had no interest in reviving the streetcar, and the tracks through the city were soon torn up and paved over. For many years, traces of the old line could be seen in the patched pavement of Grand River Avenue. Most surprisingly, in the mid-1980s during repaving work at the north end of M.A.C. Avenue at Burcham Drive, this author spotted remnants, including rusty rails and gravel ballast, of the same interurban curve shown in the above photo. Portions of this curve, which continued to appear on city zoning maps into the 2000s, might still be hidden under the front lawn of the former Tri-Delta sorority house at 634 M.A.C. Avenue.⁹

A portion of the right-of-way, from east of the intersection of Burcham Drive and Park Lake Road in East Lansing to Marsh Road in Meridian Charter Township, has been paved as a pedestrian and bicycle trail, and is known as the Interurban Pathway. An extension is planned to continue along the right-of-way past Lake Lansing to Green Road, with design and engineering work started in 2023.¹⁰

At least two late-model interurban cars that once traveled this line survive today. Michigan Electric № 28 is in the Illinois Railway Museum at Union, Illinois. № 29 is in the Lost Railway Museum at Grass Lake, Michigan.

1. Towar, p. 126. ↩︎
2. KGS Geography № 27 (1983), pp. 91–105. Towar, p. 127. ↩︎
3. KGS Geography № 27 (1983), pp. 91–105. Beal, pp. 103–4. Minutes, 21 Feb 1896, p. 138; 15 Apr 1896, pp. 149–50. ↩︎
4. Towar, p. 127. MAC Record, 3(11), 23 Nov 1897, p. 3; 3(15), 21 Dec 1897, p. 1. ↩︎
5. Street Railway Journal 25 (8), 25 Feb 1905, p. 348. Chase v. Mich United Ry Co., 165 Mich 493 (1911). Raphael, pp. 33–35. Miller, p. 49. ↩︎
6. LSJ, 24 Nov 1911, p. 8. Owosso Times, 24 Nov 1911, p. 9. Hilton, p. 288. ↩︎
7. MAC Record, 12(36), 28 May 1907, p. 3; 30(35), 31 Aug 1925, p. 578. LSJ, 1 Oct 1924, p. 1. Minutes, 19 Jun 1925, p. 633. ↩︎
8. LSJ, 14 Oct 1924, p. 11; 15 Oct 1932, p. 1. Hilton, pp. 237, 241, 289. ↩︎
9. LSJ, 6 Jun 1933, p. 8; 1 Jan 1934, p. 96. ↩︎
10. East Lansing Info, 15 May 2021. Meridian Township, 16 May 2023. ↩︎

1. † North Street, so named because it was the northernmost boundary of the original East Lansing city limits, became commonly known as “Pine Lake Road” after the interurban railway provided access to that resort area—even though the street itself did not reach all the way to the lake. Around 1928 it was renamed to Burcham Drive.↩︎
2. †† @CityofEL tweeted this image on May 3, 2018, captioned “circa 1929.” MSU Archives are less equivocal, flatly stating 1929. However, the Grand River Avenue boulevard was opened by December 1924, after which the lanes seen here were westbound (toward the camera) only. Since the Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (its sign partly visible at far left) moved to this location in February 1924, this author is certain that the correct date is 1924. Sources: MAC Record, 30(12), 8 Dec 1924, p. 183; LSJ, 29 Feb 1924, p. 21.↩︎