This is the first of a three-part series celebrating Grosse Ile and the railroad. On Sept. 29, the Grosse Ile Historical Society will host Railroading on Grosse Ile. The event includes a train ride aboard the Adrian and Blissfield Railroad.

During the 1870s Grosse Ile became a railroad center.

That was when the Canadian Southern ran its main line from Chicago to Buffalo across the island, on what is now Grosse Ile Parkway.

The main machine shops of the company were here on the island, on the south side of the track a little east of present-day Meridian, and it has even been asserted, though without proof, that a locomotive was built in them.

The building of tow bridges here, with a dock on Stony Island and car ferry service to and from Canada, seem an absurdity to us today, but it was logical to engineers of that time.

In the first place, there was a strata of limestone in the river that made a good foundation on which to erect the bridges. Also, since the freight from west to east was chiefly live cattle, there was plenty of grazing land here where the beeves could be turned out and watered before continuing the 11 hours to Buffalo.

Three hundred drivers and railroad laborers settled on the island at this time.

In October 1873 the bridge to the mainland was finished, and as the rest of the line was complete, the railroad went into operation. This bridge, on whose piers the present county bridge rests, was an iron cantilever type with a draw, (which turned like the present one), 342 feet long, one of the largest draws of that day.

The wooden truss bridge from Grosse Ile to Stony, some of whose piers are still visible, had no draw. Together they cost a million dollars.

There were eight trains per day, and in 1879 there is a record of 877 cars being ferried across the channel between Stony Island and Ontario in 24 hours.

Of course there were passenger trains, and once one of the cars fell off the dock at Stony and the people were rescued by pulling them out through the transoms. It happened at night, so scantily clad, they were given refuge at various homes on the island. My mother remembered with regret the beautiful bustled creation she lent her houseguest that was never returned.

A single track crossed the island. The machine shops and roundhouse, painted in the Canadian Southern crimson, were built a little east of present-day Meridian. Near the first big ditch, south of Parkway, there is a curving mound that once held the tracks to the roundhouse. Following it, skeptics can discover its circular stone foundations in the long grass.

The turntable was operated by hand. Two children, or one man, could turn it if the engine wasn't aboard. Of course it was used to get the engine out of the right side of the bed every morning.

Farther along Parkway, toward the east, there was a tall white building with "Customs House" painted across it in bold, black letters. Later it was moved to Macomb Street to become the home of Walter Warrow.

Then came the fenced cattle chutes, leading down to small pens, which could be opened into nearby fields. And last, and by all means least, there was a tiny passenger station down in the gully near East River Road.

A wooden overpass bridged the tracks to (prevent) the trains from blocking the road. The railroad owned 150 acres on East River south of its right of way, including not only pasture, but the property on which St. James Episcopal Church had already been built, as well as the henna-colored Biddle House, later called the Island House.

Commodore Vanderbilt's son, William Henry Vanderbilt, who had inherited the road for the New York Central in 1879, it is said, was over on Stony on a summer's day, looking over plans for the digging of a tunnel under the ship channel, when a delegation of businessmen from Detroit, headed by James Joy, arrived to persuade him to run the railroad through Detroit.

No doubt they all repaired to the Biddle House to talk over and decide our island's fate. It was a kind one; Detroit should have been the main line, and Grosse Ile an accommodation.

It took several years to effect the change, and it was 1885 when the last through train crossed the island.