238 RURAL MICHIGAN 



once become a builder of roads. The national govern- 

 ment led the way in this work, for reasons of its own, 

 primarily of a military character, and constructed 

 roads from Detroit to Chicago (early in the second 

 quarter of the last century), from Detroit to Fort 

 Gratiot at the mouth of Lake Huron, to Saginaw 

 Bay and into the Grand Eiver Valley. These na- 

 tional thoroughfares have left a considerable impres- 

 sion on the pioneer literature of the State. "When 

 the four-or-six-horse stage-coaches" entered Saline 

 on the Chicago Eoad, "with a grand flourish of wliip 

 and tin horn blowing and prancing horses, nearly 

 every person in town would be at the tavern — all 

 business at a standstill — to see, as a great' event, 

 with almost as much of a curiosity as a menagerie, 

 who had come or who were going . and the horses 

 changed." ^ 



Perhaps the deepest impression of all was im- 

 planted by the horrible roads that joined Detroit with 

 its hinterland, through a welter of mud and marshes, 

 until a plank-way relieved the unhappy situation in 

 which travelers had formerly commonly found them- 

 selves in traversing this section of the State. Occa- 

 sionally the stage departed from the established route 

 altogether and sought a more passable way over the 

 forest floor among giant trees whose enormous tops 

 had spaced the trunks at ample distances from each 

 other. "The roads were almost always poor and 

 often terrible," writes W. J. Beal. "People frequently 

 went on foot from place to place or rode in lumber 



^"Mich. Pioneer & Hist. Soc. Collections," XXXV, 394. 



