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15 Epilogue The settlement patterning of Michigan's 1860 landscape represented the state's adaptation to the needs of an emerging commercial economy. The emerging structure of production and transportation , largely in place by the beginning ofthe Civil War, accommodated the new demands brought by more extensive involvement in national trade. Although the introduction of new industries and greater scales of production continued to modify Michigan's economy, they entailed no further alteration of an infrastructure flexible enough to provide a basis for subsequent development. The era ofthe Civil War marked a further intensification ofeconomic activity in Michigan and the Old Northwest. Agriculture remained the dominant economic strategy; however, growth altered the scale and organization of production and substantially increased the rate of return. Commercial demand for northern agricultural products increased markedly after 1860 in response to military needs and European crop failures, and rising prices for farm produce offered farmers unparalleled financial opportunities. Wartime deficits in labor were met by a greater reliance on mechanization. Michigan farmers turned increasingly to machines to increase the efficiency of cultivation and to free household labor for field tasks. Their adoption of new crops and practices and systematic land use resulted in a substantial increase in the percentage of improved acres per farm and the consolidation of croplands. Michigan agriculture accelerated its trend toward greater and more specialized production.1 The restructuring of bank finance supported the growth of farm production by overcoming the limitations of antebellum exchange. The Bank Act of 1863 provided a secure medium of exchange and encouraged capital flows necessary to expand the scale of business. The growing volume and complexity of commercial and industrial investment promoted the growth of regional centers as clearing houses and concentrated bank finance in central urban locations. Detroit arose as a national banking center, and other cities, such as Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and Saginaw, became foci of regional banking. These banking centers forged networks of tributary hinterlands where they, rather than outside sources, provided entrepreneurs with loans and opportunities for investment. Financial institutions enhanced existing connections between Michigan cities, and these links played a crucial role in developing business and industry and helped define the position of urban centers in the regional setdement structure.2 Postbellum expansion in Michigan's urban centers brought further commercial diversification and growth. Cities that enlarged the scale oftheir wholesale trade attracted larger populations that, in turn, intensified demand for retailing and services and promoted the growth of local market 311 312 WEST TO FAR MICHIGAN industries. Such an environment encouraged technological and organizational innovation, which stimulated further expansion and diversification in many aspects of the urban economy .3 Because settlements with better access to raw materials and markets stood a greater chance to increase their wholesale trade, their success depended increasingly on the state's principal transportation system. The expansion of the rail network in the 1860s permitted favored cities to expand their economic bases and emerge as an industrial urban hierarchy. Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids, Lansing, Jackson, Saginaw, and other transportation centers became foci of trade and manufacturing. As the hub of Michigan's rail network, as well as its financial center, Detroit's expanding trade underwrote phenomenal growth and economic diversification. Manufacturing took on an increasingly larger role in Michigan, concentrated around heavy industries, such as iron and steelmaking, as well as the production of paper, construction materials , agricultural machinery, industrial goods, pharmaceuticals, furniture, chemicals, steamboats , stoves, and railway cars.4 The restructuring of bank finance, the commercialization of agriculture, and the expansion of trade and transportation all worked to complete an infrastructure capable of extending economic services over Michigan's interior. These developments did not, however, measurably alter the settlement structure of 1860. The inextricable continuity between the late-antebellum landscape and subsequent settlement patterning emphasizes the importance of the frontier experience in shaping what came afterward and the degree to which the process of settlement permeated all facets of the new landscape. Although the closing of the frontier did not create the modern State of Michigan, it played a central role in developing the "agricultural commonwealth" upon which the region's economic growth rested, as George Fuller recognized more than eighty years ago. As the crucial process underlying the success of commercial farming, frontier colonization shaped a landscape that provided the basis for a complex economy closely integrated with national markets. The milieu of the new economy diversified production and expanded services, launching Michigan's modern commercial growth. In this sense, today's Michigan...

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