Michigan historical collections. [Vol. 17]

324

324 ANNUAL MEETING, 1890.

that part of Oceana county that projects into lake Michigan is fast
becoming the great peach-producing region of the State.
No more interesting part of the State can be found than that occupied almost exclusively by emigrants from Holland in the southern
part of Ottawa and the northern part of Allegan counties. Their persistent industry has made a garden of what was once a very undesirable part of the S3tate.
An important factor in the development of this part of the State has
been the Grand Rapids & Indiana railroad, the construction of whicht.
was made possible by a governme-nt grant of 1,000,000 acres of what,
was at the time, unsalable land. From Grand Rapids to the Straits of
Mackinac, a distance of 225 miles, this road was built through a practically unoccupied wilderness, severely taxing the faith, enterprise and
capital of its promoters, but contributing innumerable benefits on the
country traversed by it. Previous to the advent of this *road, and the
Detroit & Milwaukee road built a few years previous, the only means
of communication with the east was via the lakes and a plank road to
Kalamazoo that intersected the Central road. The highways east were
almost impassable and little used. My first trip from Grand Rapids
to Detroit required six days of hard travel.
In the upper part of the lower peninsula, and in the region of
which I am speaking, there is rapidly developing an iron industry of
large proportions, induced by the recently developed facilities for bringing together the ores of Lake Superior and the charcoal produced from
the seemingly inexhaustible forests of hard timber that abound through
all this region, underlaid by the best soil to be found in the State.
With the great command over the forces of nature held by the present
generation, it is not unreasonable to suppose that the next twenty years
will show wonderful progress through all this region.
A noticeable feature in the-development of this region is the fact,
that its progress, compared with the booming region along and beyond
the Mississippi has been slow. It has never been especially attractive
to foreign capital, and as a result the whole region has been exempt
from those wild speculations that have been so disastrous to some
parts of the west. Whatever has been done is by the comparatively
slow, but sure, accumulations of the people, and go where you will
through all western Michigan, you will find that an unusual proportion
of all the splendid improvements you see belong to the resident population, and the accruing profits are being used in further development.
Whatever may be done hereafter, full credit must be given the