Railroad: Hecla Belt Line Railroad Company

Built → Hecla Belt Line Railroad Co. → Bay City & Battle Creek Railway (1912) → MCRR

Built: 1902 by Hecla Portland Cement investors

Operated for 10 years.

Became: Bay City & Battle Creek Railway in 1912

Reference: [MRRC]

Notes

The Hecla Belt Line Railroad Company was built by the owners of the Hecla Portland Cement Company, which had a plant on the north shore of the Saginaw River, at what is now the east end of Wilder Road in North Bay City.

The purpose of the railroad was to bring coal from the Wenona and Auburn areas east to the plant, as well as marl and shale from Ogemaw County (via the Michigan Central at Wenona) to the plant to be used in the production of Portland Cement.

Over its ten years of operation, the plant was a financial failure and operations discontinued about 1912 and the equipment and property sold off. The railroad was conveyed to the Bay City & Battle Creek railroad (a Michigan Central subsidiary which also ran from near Wenona Yard west to Midland).

Sources:

• Michigan Railroads and Railroad Companies, Graydon Meints, Michigan State University Press, 1992
• Geological Survey of Michigan, Clays and Shales, by H. Reis, 1902
• The Michigan Miner, 1902.
• State of Michigan, Bureau of Labor and Industrial Statistics, 1907
• Michigan Manufacturer and Financial Record, 1912.

Time Line

1902. The Michigan Railroad Commission approves maps filed by the Hecla Belt Line Railroad Co. showing the location of the route of its proposed line in and near Bay City, with crossings of the Michigan Central in three places, the Detroit & Mackinac, the Cincinnati, Saginaw & Mackinaw division of the Grand Trunk, and the Bay Cities Consolidated Street railway. [PHTH-1902-0523]

1902. The railroad has about two miles of road in operation west from the Hecla Cement Company plant on Saginaw Bay, with interlocked crossings of the D&M, H&W (at North Bay City) and MC (at Tower 12). [MCR-1903]