MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 
41 
and a harbor for shipping the product on the Great Lakes. The salt 
industry naturally went with the lumber sawing, as the waste from 
the latter could be used to evaporate the salt. In t lie mean time, other 
cities were growing up in the state, there being in 1870 no less than 
fifteen in the southern peninsula compared with five in 1860. 
Railroad building in Michigan is easy, there being no very great differ- 
ences in topography. We find by 1880 many roads completed and others 
under construction. These opened up the interior regions by furnishing 
routes to market. This is especially noticeable along the line of the 
Grand Rapids and Indiana Railway, where the population along its 
line is very much denser than back from it. A study of a railroad map 
of Michigan shows that three out of the five northern built roads bend 
decidedly toward the west. This is true in the case of the Michigan 
Central, Detroit and Mackinaw, and Ann Arbor, but is not evident in 
the case of the Pere Marquette and the Grand Rapids and Indiana, as 
they were already built so close to the west coast that there was no 
room to bend. Is it not probable that the bending resulted from the 
presence of the rich iron and copper ore of the upper peninsula, and the 
desire to exploit it? 
At this time, only Oscoda and Montmorency Counties in the southern 
peninsula were unpopulated. In the northern peninsula, the discovery 
of new iron ore districts along the Wisconsin border encouraged the 
settlement of these regions. Ten years later in 1890, the whole of the 
southern and most of the northern peninsulas were settled, and the num- 
ber of cities had greatly increased, there now being eight in the northern 
and twenty-three in the southern peninsula. Two of these cities, Big 
Rapids and An Sable-Oscoda (classing the last two towns as one), which 
were founded on the lumber industry, are no longer cities of over 5000 
population since, after the exhaustion of the lumber, other industries did 
not follow. 
Since 1880, especially throughout the southern four tiers of counties, 
there has been a steady decrease in the rural population, accompanied 
by an increase in the urban population. The first regions to suffer were 
the hilly districts, for example in Barry Co. The lake region of north- 
west Washtenaw and the adjoining part of Livingston county have 
•also never supported a dense population for the same reason. 
The chief changes by 1900 were an increase in the rural population 
of the northern part of the state, and a corresponding decrease in the 
southern, while all over the state the urban population steadily in- 
■ereased. This increase of the urban at the expense of the rural popula- 
tion continued, there being in 1910 forty-nine cities of over 5000 in 
Michigan compared to forty-one in 1900. These new cities, moreover, 
except two in the upper peninsula mining districts, were all located 
where the rural population was on the decrease. Where railroad com- 
munication is poor, and the soil mediocre, as in Oscoda, Crawford, and 
Lake counties, the population is likewise small. The largest cities, in 
general, during the last ten years became much larger, but many of 
the smaller ones, as Port Huron, Manistee, Coldwater, and Ishpeming, 
lost in population. 
Forty counties in Michigan have lost in rural population. (See Map 45 
K) Allegan county, if the manufacturing villages of Otsego and Allegan, 
which Increased 2500 in the last ten years, are excluded, would also be in- 
