Michigan Road

The Michigan Road was one of the earliest roads in Indiana. Roads in early Indiana were often roads in name only. In actuality they were sometimes little more than crude paths following old animal and Native American trails and filled with sinkholes, stumps, and deep, entrapping ruts. Hoosier leaders, however, recognized the importance of roads to the growth and economic health of the state, and the needed improvements. They encouraged construction of roads which would do for Indiana what the National Road was doing for the whole country.

As early as 1821 the legislature earmarked funds for more than two dozen roads throughout the state. Roadbuilding was often the responsibility of the counties, which were empowered to call out a local labor force for construction and provide road viewers, or supervisors.

Indiana's first "super highway" was the Michigan Road, which was built in the 1830s and 1840s and ran from Madison, Indiana to Michigan City, Indiana via Indianapolis. Like the National Road, it did much to spur settlement and economic growth. One-half of the pioneers to settle northwestern Indiana did so by using the Michigan Road to travel from the Ohio River to their destination. It was the "most ambitious" project to connect Indianapolis with the rest of the state.

One of the things that made the road possible was a treaty the state of Indiana forged with the Pottawatomie on October 16, 1826. Governor James B. Ray led the negotiations. It allowed for a ribbon of land 100 feet (30 m) wide to stretch from the Ohio River (at Madison) to Lake Michigan (Michigan City). The Pottawatomie left the region by the very road when the last of their tribe was forcibly removed in the 1838 Pottawatomie Trail of Death.

A commission was selected to route the road from Indianapolis to Lake Michigan in 1828. It was told to make the trailhead be the best harbor, preferably natural, that could be had with Lake Michigan. The Kankakee River's swamp posed a problem for the construction of the road, forcing the commission to avoid a more direct northwesterly route and instead have it go from Logansport, Indiana straight up to the south bend of the St Joseph River (now South Bend, Indiana), and then west to Lake Michigan. Michigan City was formally selected to be the trailend in 1832.

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Wikipedia