Wheat Map of 1878

Here's a little gem I came across in an 1880 edition of the Ypsilanti Commercial. It's a "Wheat Map of the State of Michigan for 1878." Almost every county has stats for acres under cultivation, bushels of wheat produced, and average number of bushels per acre.

The only states producing more than a million bushels are several in the second, third and forth tiers of counties north of the Ohio border. They are Calhoun, Jackson, and Washtenaw; Livingston and Oakland; and Ionia, Clinton, and Genessee counties. Washtenaw is also one of the counties with yields of over 20 bushels an acre.

Now, who is (what looks like) that lonely and despondent wheat farmer up in Roscommon County? He's got 6 little acres up there that yielded 48 bushels, for a meagre 8 bushels per acre. One hopes that poor man found better fortune.

There is no wheat at all reported in several upper lower peninsular counties: Oscoda, Crawford, Benzie, Leelenaw, and Montmorency. Also, Arenac county has not yet been carved from Bay County, and Kalkaska is spelled Kalcasca, the latter of which sounds like one of the innumerable miraculous patent medicines of the day.

Tidbits from 1921 Washtenaw Map

While nosing around in a box of old maps the other day at the Archives, Dusty D found this gem: a 1921 beauty by the Auto Road Map Co. The map contains many details of vanished communities, railroads, and waterways.

Before ever seeing the copyright date, I noticed that Ford Lake was missing. This tipped me off right away that the map was made pre-1931, which is when Henry Ford dammed the river and began to create Ford Lake.

One now-vanished railroad is the old Huckleberry Line, then called the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern. You can see it exiting from the northern part of Ypsi and curving down to Saline, from which it continued west. You can also see the branch of the Detroit United electric interurban following alongside the "Chicago Turnpike," now Michigan Avenue. Remember the recent "cold wave" story? They threw a plow on one car, which was filled with photographers recording this novelty, and tried to forge through to Saline but the line was closed for literally weeks.

A branch of the old Ann Arbor railroad (still in use) is also visible, leading down to Urania. Urania was not a settlement per se but just a station name. It was named by one Thomas Richards who campaigned successfully to bring a railroad to Milan. He named it for his wife Urania Richards.

Another section of the interurban connected Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor. Here you can see a westward section of the Detroit United line traveling out to Chelsea...and beyond. How Dusty D would love to go back in time and take a leisurely ride on one of the cars.

Last and most nostalgic IMO are the many little settlements on the map, now vanished. Here you can see Lima Center, Jerusalem, and Rogers' Corners, all west of Ann Arbor. Just south of these is Fredonia, which is still referred to as an existing community on the Freedom Township website. Many others are just vestigial names, like Mooreville, with only old cemeteries remaining to remember the onetime founders and residents of these tiny communities, long gone.