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10 Long-Distance Transportation and External Trade By the fourth decade of the nineteenth century, agricultural settlement had spread over much of southern Michigan, and farmers raised a range of staple crops for a largely internal market. Although most immigrants hoped to increase production and participate in wider trade, their efforts were thwarted by the lack ofaccess to outside markets. The region's isolation from the urban markets of the East limited the scale and diversity of agriculture until conditions favored long-distance exchange. The transformation of Michigan's frontier economy came in response to growing external demands which set in motion a series of changes in transportation, technology, and the organization of marketing that altered the geography of agriculture on the western frontier. Rapid growth in the scale and organization of production, processing, and marketing infrastructures occurred in the second quarter of the nineteenth century to permit the expansion of the American economy on an unprecedented scale, a phenomenon that historian George Rogers Taylor called the "transportation revolution:,J Integrating the frontier economy of Lower Michigan with that of the eastern United States required a network of efficient and economical long-distance transportation capable of moving heavy, bulky materials between widely separated points as rapidly as possible, while avoiding transfer from one means of carriage to another en route. The creation of this network occurred during a period of substantial innovation in the technology oftransportation which changed the form and scope of trade and the means by which it was carried out. The transportation revolution altered Michigan's internal economy and moved it toward commodity production. This impact is best seen in the larger context of evolving antebellum transportation technology and long-distance trade. OvERLAND TRANSPORT IN EXPANSION AND DEVELOPMENT In the first quarter of the nineteenth century, roads offered the widest access to the American interior , but the technology of overland transportation limited their use largely to immigration. The development of western settlement and trade required flexibility in routing. Roads could be built quickly and adapted to a wide range of environments. In contrast, water routes reached only portions of the interior, and much ofthe West lay beyond navigable streams, even though water transport remained a more efficient means ofmoving large cargoes over long distances. Overland routes dominated expansion into the West and contributed significantly to the development of frontier regions, including southern Michigan.2 217 218 WEST TO FAR MICHIGAN The nature of conveyances and the composition of roads limited long-distance trade. Wagons, carts, and other wheeled vehicles carried relatively small cargoes and moved slowly, especially in bad weather. The cost and labor required to ship heavy loads restricted freight to valuable and durable items. The form of road networks designed for short-range exchange further limited their use in national trade. In the absence ofconsistent support by the national government , the construction of internal improvements lay in the hands of states or private corporations, who built improved roads, called "turnpikes:' to serve the interests of internal rather than national trade.3 Nevertheless, the expansion of roads and turnpikes created an overland network that facilitated immigration to newly opened areas. As early as 1819, Americans followed established overland routes to the Old Northwest, and in the 1820s the National Road opened the Ohio Valley and the region south of the Great Lakes to immigration. The construction of turnpikes and the development of stage routes connecting the Lake Erie port of Buffalo with population centers of the Northeast increased the accessibility of Michigan to immigrants from New York and New England, and at least one stage company offered transportation from Buffalo to Detroit via the southern shore of the lake.4 Most of Michigan's settlers came from the Northeast. Their principal route passed along the southern Lake Erie shore by way ofErie, Pennsylvania, and Cleveland, Ohio; past Sandusky and Miami Bay; and north through the Black Swamp to Detroit. A second land route went westward through Canada along the northern shore of Lake Erie. These routes were heavily traveled in the 1830s, especially during the winter months, when ice closed Lake Erie and the frozen ground permitted rapid travel over streams, swamps, and other obstacles that might have slowed travel during warmer weather. Farmers found the overland passage to Michigan particularly attractive because it permitted them to move their stock inexpensively. In warm weather, immigrants followed this route as far as Cleveland, where they procured lake passage to Detroit. Although never able to compete with water...

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