The Lakeside and Marblehead Railroad
Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged
Copyright 2011 Dean K. Fick
Published by Montevallo Historical Press at Smashwords
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Dedication
This book is dedicated to the memory of Olan Ferris Gardner, General Manager, 1935-1956, whose leadership and generosity made the Lakeside & Marblehead Railroad a marvelous place to work, and whose kindness to railroad enthusiasts made many of the photographs in this book possible.
Acknowledgments
This book would not exist if not for the actions and attitudes of scores of individuals over the decades. It probably began many years before I was born with the kindness of the Lakeside & Marblehead Railroad’s General Manager, Olan Gardner, toward railfans. No doubt it was moved along by Bob Lorenz and Richard J. Cook who felt motivated to visit the L&M and to take pictures of it, and was further solidified by the collecting habits of Peter Carr, George Danchisen, and John Kozak, who carefully preserved and organized the great mass of written material the Lakeside & Marblehead Railroad created over the years, and which became its posterity after its death.
My parents certainly played a part in creating this book by tolerating and even encouraging my affection toward railroads, and the cause was definitely advanced when they moved into an old farmhouse along the line’s former right-of-way. Not to forget John Gdoviciak, the intrepid railroad engineer of the Standard Slag Company during the 1970’s, who allowed me, at the tender age of five years, to operate one of the L&M’s engines.
But I am digressing. A better organized attempt to recognize those who contributed to this book is vital, and I hereby intend to give it my best effort.
First and foremost, George Danchisen deserves a medal, for he alone singlehandedly saved the L&M’s records from destruction, spent an entire winter sifting through literally tons of L&M documents, and over time, accumulated a comprehensive photographic collection. The information in this book would lack much detail had not George acted as he did over the decades.
Secondly, I would like to thank Peter Carr for his unwavering support. Peter began to collect L&M artifacts during the 1960’s before the line went out of business. The use of his valuable photographic collection as well as his support and encouragement over the past few years have been greatly appreciated.
My next largest debt of gratitude is owed to George W. Hilton, who allowed me to re-publish his book about the Toledo, Port Clinton and Lakeside Railway, the L&M’s close neighbor. George’s excellent interurban research was a foundation for this book, and I am very grateful for his broad background in transportation history, which he generously shared with me.
Douglas V. Shaw of the University of Akron met with me over lunch at the beginning of this project, surveyed my plans carefully, and helped me aim in the right direction.
Bob Lorenz, talented painter, photographer, and collector of railroad memorabilia, shared his time and resources with me, and created an original painting for this book.
The L&M’s past employees, Lucille Ihnat Benya, Joseph Ihnat, and the late Bob Dress, provided firsthand knowledge of what it was like to work at the line, gave generously of their time and recollections, and endured many impromptu telephone interviews with grace and aplomb.
Jeff Brown, author of The Lake Terminal Railroad, generously set aside his own L&M book project and shared everything he had collected with me.
Charles Bates of the Allen County Historical Society patiently guided me through the Society’s fine library and railroad memorabilia collection and arranged for Richard J. Cook’s photographs to be reproduced.
Grace Luebke of the Elmore, Ohio Public Library saved many valuable newspaper articles concerning the L&M’s construction, then led me straight to them on a moment’s notice.
Rosie Dick, Earl Daniel, and Tim Tester of the Mad River & NKP Railroad Society of Bellevue, Ohio allowed me off-season, after-hours access to their museum’s collection and provided valuable support for my research.
John B. Corns, the inheritor of much of John A. Rehor’s outstanding photographic collection, located the picture of the L&M’s first Number 1 at Glendale and generously shared it via the Internet.
David A. Pfeiffer of the National Archives at College Park, Maryland, helped me navigate through a maze of Interstate Commerce Commission records, found a treasure trove of L&M maps, and provided support above and beyond the call of duty.
The librarians of the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan helped me locate and efficiently sort through the records of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railroad.
The staff of the Ida Rupp Public Library in Port Clinton, Ohio allowed me to spend far too many hours at their microfilm reader examining old newspapers.
The research librarians of the Ohio Historical Society Library in Columbus helped me find city directories and state documents supporting my research.
The friendly workers and volunteers of the Fitchburg Public Library in Fitchburg, Massachusetts helped me locate records concerning Hiram A. Blood and the early railroads of that area.
The curatorial staff of the William J. Rotch House and Garden in New Bedford, Massachusetts showed me around and provided helpful background information regarding the man who was once the richest citizen of their very wealthy city.
Norris Pope, Director of the Stanford University Press gave me permission to publish his excellent photograph of the Ottawa, an early Cleveland & Toledo Railroad locomotive.
Sally Sue Witten, author and historian, of Lakeside, Ohio, helped me find early photographs of the resort, lent me a rare postcard, and provided much encouragement.
David T. Glick was thoughtful enough to photograph the L&M’s motor car at Bono, Ohio in 1962, kind enough to allow me to include his negatives in this book, and diligent enough to help me ferret out some of the finer details of the L&M’s early years.
Marian Bird, former employee of the Standard Slag Company, gave me access to the ex-L&M engine house in 1979 so I could photograph the company’s rolling stock.
K. Soup Fick, my wife, read the manuscript and provided invaluable personal and professional support.
My parents, Kenneth and Gwendolyn Fick, gave me life in the first place and have been unwavering supporters for almost 41 years.
And finally, I would like to thank you, the reader of this book. The Lakeside & Marblehead Railroad will survive even physical extinction in the minds of those who find it interesting. Here’s hoping that you do.
Dean K.
Fick
Davenport, Iowa
November 2003
Chapter 1: Settlement of the Marblehead Peninsula
The United States Government encouraged its citizens to move westward after the Revolutionary War. Americans, a young, restless, and primarily eastern people, were still driven by the spirit that led them to go it alone in the first place. Their manifest destiny, they believed, was to claim all of North America as their very own.
Forces other than destiny forced people to move west, too. The new nation’s population doubled from 5.3 million in 1800 to 9.6 million in 1820. Cities absorbed many of the new arrivals, but the United States economy was based on agriculture, and that meant every person required lots of space―and west was the direction where virgin agricultural land was to be found.
The wilderness that was Ohio became a state in 1803. Roads in Ohio, where they existed, were very primitive affairs, and getting around on them was a real problem. Even under the best of conditions, it took four horses and a whole day to move one and a half tons of weight eighteen miles along a road. And so, pioneers heading west almost always used water transportation to get there.
As the westward movement built momentum, ship traffic began to increase on the Great Lakes, especially after the War of 1812. The Erie Canal, which was the greatest construction project that had yet been undertaken by Americans, was completed in 1825. It stretched from the Hudson River to Buffalo, New York, effectively connecting the eastern seaboard to Lake Erie.
The industrious Canadians built the Welland Canal in 1833 so ships could directly navigate between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.
Great Lakes ships depended upon favorable winds to get where they needed to go until Robert Fulton launched the nation’s first practical steamboat, the Clermont, in 1807. By 1810, steamboats were common in the waters of eastern rivers, and around 1818, the first Great Lakes steamer, Walk-in-the-Water, paddled its way happily up and down the coasts with nary a thought given to the winds. Others soon joined it, though sailing vessels were by far still the norm.
Some migrating pioneers, whether traveling by water or land, decided to stop in northern Ohio. Here, about halfway between the present day cities of Toledo and Cleveland, they found a small peninsula of land jutting northeastward into Lake Erie, interrupting the otherwise smooth contour of the coast. That peninsula is today called the Marblehead Peninsula. It is a mostly flat, dry strip of land twenty-two miles long and one-and-a-half miles across. South of the Marblehead Peninsula is Sandusky Bay. Two islands, today called Kelley’s and Johnson’s, lie close by the Peninsula’s northern and southern sides respectively.
All Peninsula land―and the entire section of the country where it is located―once belonged to Connecticut. Connecticut’s original land grant stretched westward all the way to the Pacific.
The national government asked to be given most of Connecticut after the revolutionary war, and that state obediently ceded all concerned territory to the government―except for 3,800,000 “reserved” acres that its kept for itself.
In 1792, Connecticut granted some 500,000 acres of this reserved land to those of its citizens who had been burned out of their homes by the British during the revolution. These territories thus came to be known as “Firelands.” All of the Marblehead Peninsula except the very western end lies within the Firelands boundary.
Some Connecticut land grant recipients stayed put in their eastern state and sold their grants; others decided to move west. Those who moved brought familiar place names to Ohio with them: Danbury, Norwalk, and others.
Danbury, an unincorporated hamlet located on the south side of the Peninsula, is one of the Marblehead Peninsula’s earliest settlements. Here, in 1811, a United States customs office was established under the direction of Colonel Peter Ferry. Surrounded as they were by wilderness, Danbury citizens fervently hoped that their town would grow to become one of the leading ports of entry in Ohio, but geography and the passage of time defeated the town’s ambitions.
Sandusky (then called Ogontz Place), a mainland town much more centrally located a few miles to the southeast, quickly outgrew Danbury. The customs office moved there after ten years, and Danbury remained a small, unincorporated town.
On the eastern end of the Marblehead Peninsula, Benajah Wolcott, a man originally from the Connecticut Danbury, established a homesite in 1809. Doing so made him one of the earliest notable settlers in the area. He had first come to the Peninsula in 1806 while surveying the Firelands with Moses Cleaveland, organizer of the Connecticut Land Company and the man for whom the city of Cleveland is named.
Trying to make water transportation as safe as possible, the United States Government erected a lighthouse in 1822 on Rocky Point, at the very eastern tip of the Marblehead Peninsula, and hired Benajah Wolcott to become its first keeper. Interestingly, the new lighthouse was constructed of limestone quarried from the Peninsula itself. Benajah Wolcott may have gained some inspiration from the lighthouse builders when he dug out some of this stone for a house in 1822. The high quality of the limestone began to be noted.
Eleven years after the lighthouse went up, another pioneer named Alexander Clemons began to quarry and ship limestone from Cunningham’s Island (today called Kelley’s Island), the island north of the Peninsula.
Alexander had arrived in the area in 1817 from Portland, Maine with his father, mother, and brother Elijah. The interesting thing about Alexander’s island quarrying activities is that he probably didn’t have any legal right to undertake them. This was of no consequence, however; when the Kelley family bought the island and renamed it in 1834, they retained Alexander’s services briefly in helping them to establish their own limestone operation.
Alexander Clemons was a very industrious man. About this time, he evidently made up his mind that Peninsula limestone was to be the key to his future. He was correct about its high value. When tested, the stone was found to be the best building stone then available in the region. Its proximity to the waters of Lake Erie was another benefit because, as previously mentioned, water transportation was the most efficient way to move material during these years.
Clemons wasted no time before getting started. Moving to the mainland in 1834, he purchased approximately 133 acres of land on the Peninsula’s northern shore at the eastern end, near the lighthouse, and opened a new quarry the very next year. His quarry was probably the first impetus for large scale settlement of the Peninsula’s eastern part. Only three houses stood in what is now Marblehead when Alexander arrived, but many more quickly followed. The population grew to nearly 500 people by 1840.
The area around Alexander’s operation was first called Point Clemons or Point Prospect, but it soon began to be called Marble Head or Marblehead. The origin of the name is thought to be a case of either mistaken identity or commemoration. Some say that newcomers had misidentified the Peninsula’s limestone as marble; others suppose the town was named after Marblehead, Massachusetts. Certainly the geography of the Ohio peninsula might have reminded pioneers of the Atlantic coast.
While Alexander’s quarry was shipping some of its first stone for the locks at Sault St. Marie, Michigan, a new transportation technology, the railroad, was almost ready to make its debut in the area.
Chapter 2: Railroad Development in Northern Ohio
Railroading in the modern sense began in England with the opening of the Stockton & Darlington Railroad on September 17, 1825. England was far ahead of the United States in steam engine and iron technology, notwithstanding the success of early American paddle steamers. Most New World inhabitants remained centered on water transportation during these years. Only a few people thought that railroad technology might soon become the wave of the future.
During the 1830’s, the idea of railroads suddenly caught fire and intrigued more than a few people in America―in fact, the reported success of some early eastern lines caused Ohioans to go mildly insane over the idea. Men with little or no money began to project lines all over the place. The state encouraged them by passing its infamous “plunder law” (quickly repealed), which allowed any railroad, turnpike or canal corporation to borrow from the state up to 50 percent of its paid-in capital stock.
The first action on a railroad through northern Ohio occurred in 1831 when the state legislature granted a charter for a line between Sandusky and Columbus. That line never materialized, but on September 7, 1835, General William Henry Harrison broke ground with Governor Vance at Sandusky for the Mad River & Lake Erie Railroad, which was projected to run from Sandusky to Columbus and Cincinnati by way of Springfield.
The Mad River & Lake Erie was envisioned to be a horse-drawn affair, but in October 1837, while the MR&LE’s president was on a trip to the east to purchase equipment, he stopped briefly at the factory of Rogers, Ketchum and Grosvenor in Paterson, New Jersey. There he was shown a small locomotive with an innovation never before seen on such a machine: a whistle. Charmed by its sharp blast, he resolved immediately to purchase the early steam engine. Upon such whims were great precedents set. The locomotive’s gauge was 4 feet, 10 inches, which became the standard gauge for most of the railroads in the state for many years.
The Mad River & Lake Erie named its locomotive Sandusky and quickly shipped it to its namesake Ohio town, where nearly everyone in town turned out to take a look at it. Afterward, Sandusky went to work helping to construct its own track, which consisted of planks topped with strap iron five-eighths of an inch thick, T-shaped iron rail still being uncommon.
About the same time the Mad River & Lake Erie got going, another plan was underway to construct a rail line close to the Lake Erie shore from Pennsylvania to the Maumee River near Manhattan, which later was to become part of Toledo. The new line was to be called the Ohio Railroad.
Its promoter believed that he could reduce construction costs to a mere $16,000 per mile by doing away with land grading―he would simply suspend the line from piles driven into the earth, build wooden stringers between the piles to support nine-by-three-inch planks, and put strap iron on top of the planks to serve as rail. This was an idea that was bound to fail, technologically speaking
In 1840, the Ohio Railroad began to drive piles along its right-of-way near Fremont, moving westward into the Black Swamp that covered the northwestern part of the state. It made progress at the rate of about 500 feet per day, but by 1843, work ceased and never resumed. The line had run out of money. Local residents were left with only worthless company scrip that had served as a de facto local currency. The remains of the piles driven into the earth were visible in some places as late as 1890.
The Mad River & Lake Erie Railroad made better progress. It reached Bellevue by 1838 and arrived in Tiffin by 1841. English novelist Charles Dickens, who was traveling through the area at the time, rode from Tiffin to Sandusky on the Mad River & Lake Erie after a bone jarring carriage ride from Cincinnati. Boarding in Tiffin at 2 o’clock PM, he was able to take his dinner in Sandusky that evening.
The Mad River & Lake Erie successfully moved traffic in northerly and southerly directions from Sandusky, but there were no east-west lines in northern Ohio during this time. Passengers going those directions invariably used established steamship routes on Lake Erie. However, towns like Norwalk, farther from the shore, had no regular passenger service. Their citizens, who were shaken and rattled on poor or non-existent roads, began to clamor for railroads.
The first proposed railroad between Toledo and Cleveland was conceived by citizens of Sandusky and Elyria. They named their line the Junction Railroad. Organized in 1846, it announced that it would lay track between Toledo and Cleveland via the towns of Fremont, Sandusky, and Elyria. That it favored Fremont rather than Port Clinton indicated a preference to avoid the expense and engineering challenge of bridging Sandusky Bay at the western base of the Marblehead Peninsula. Despite announcement of this line, Junction promoters couldn’t seem to get started.
Four years later, in 1850, the Junction was still languishing, a road to nowhere. But then the road’s promoters were jolted awake by impatient Norwalk citizens who proposed to build a rival line. Their railroad was called the Toledo, Norwalk & Cleveland Railroad, and it would run between its namesake cities through the towns of Fremont, Norwalk and Grafton, entering Cleveland on the Cleveland Columbus and Cincinnati.
The new line’s announcement got the Junction promoters going. Understandably, they now wanted to avoid their rival at Fremont, and proposed instead to build to Toledo through the smaller towns of Port Clinton and Oak Harbor. However, somehow failing to get their charter amended to allow this, they formed a new line called the Port Clinton Railroad. The Port Clinton proposed to build eastward from Toledo to the north shore of Sandusky Bay opposite Sandusky city.
The Junction Railroad promoters chose a route through Port Clinton only to avoid their rival line at Fremont, not to pick up lucrative traffic. Fremont was a better prospect at the time for growth than Port Clinton, and the Port Clinton Railroad’s finances were very shaky. It was authorized capital stock in the amount of $100,000, but only $11,000 of that was subscribed and $550 actually paid in to the company. Although it was a separate corporation, the Port Clinton’s legal status was unclear because, for some reason, all of its contracts were made in the name of the Junction Railroad.
The Toledo Norwalk & Cleveland opened from Toledo to Grafton on January 24, 1853, after two years of construction, and the Junction opened close on the heels of its competitor from Sandusky to the Cuyahoga River (a river that it could not obtain permission to bridge) about six months later.
Both lines were now in operation, but bad feelings permeated the relationship between the two companies. At the time the TN&C opened, the Junction/Port Clinton didn’t yet have its bridge in place across Sandusky Bay, and as it prepared to start construction, a group of Fremont citizens slapped it with a lawsuit. The suit sought to prevent the railroad from bridging the Bay, claiming that the proposed structure would interfere with successful water navigation.
While this lawsuit was pending, the directors of both lines began to realize that they would be stronger as one company than as rival lines. Their struggle to outbuild each other had resulted in both ending up with weak, unballasted track and rickety wooden bridges. So, on September 1, 1853, the Toledo, Norwalk & Cleveland Railroad and Junction Railroad consolidated their lines into the new Cleveland & Toledo Railroad. The Fremont lawsuit ended, and the Port Clinton Railroad’s trackage was promptly completed. From Danbury, a 700-foot railroad bridge crossed Sandusky Bay’s waters for the first time.
Meanwhile, at the eastern end of the Marblehead Peninsula, the enterprising Alexander Clemons was still hard at work in the quarry business, now joined by his sons. The past twenty years had been kind to him. His real estate was said to be worth $5,000 and he had become postmaster of Marblehead.
As a progressive man, he was doubtlessly intrigued by the new railroad only seven miles from his quarry, but he couldn’t make practical use of it because there was no easy way for him to get his stone aboard its trains. And so, for now, Marblehead stone continued to move entirely by water.
Back on the fledgling Cleveland & Toledo, all was not sweetness and light. The C&T, as noted, consisted of two railroads that were spliced together at the village of Clay Junction (now Millbury) a few miles east of Toledo. Here, the former Port Clinton/Junction turned east for Oak Harbor, and the former Toledo Norwalk & Cleveland track continued southeast to Fremont. The C&T’s northern track was called the Northern Division, while the southern line was predictably referred to as the Southern Division.
The Northern Division was a troubled affair. It featured a shorter route to Cleveland from Toledo than the Southern Division, but Cleveland was reluctant to allow the Northern Division to build a bridge across the 160-foot Cuyahoga River. Thus, as a regular part of their trip, Northern Division travelers were removed with their belongings from their train at the Cuyahoga, where they made the crossing on a ferry. Afterward, they boarded another train and continued their journey. In contrast, Southern Division passengers did not experience this inconvenience, entering Cleveland as they did on the Cleveland Columbus & Cincinnati from Grafton.
As might be expected, most business favored the Southern Division. Additionally, local revenue was hard to generate on the western end of the Northern Division because the track from Port Clinton to Toledo served only very small communities.
In 1857, a financial collapse put the country into a sharp economic recession. Seeking to lighten its financial load, the Cleveland & Toledo gave up on the Northern Division. There was simply not enough traffic to support it. The C&T directors decided to entirely abandon it west of Sandusky.
The citizens of Port Clinton got wind of the C&T’s abandonment plans by September 1858. They were not at all pleased. Founded as a terminus for a canal that was never built, the town had financially supported the rail line in order to feed its future growth and prosperity. Port Clinton sued the C&T, demanding that the line must be maintained, but train service gradually ended anyway. In late November only one train was running from Port Clinton to Sandusky―it left at 6:30 AM and returned at 7:30 PM without meeting eastbound trains. By the end of 1858 train service from Port Clinton stopped completely.
The Cleveland & Toledo eventually won the abandonment lawsuit. No more train movements occurred on the Northern Division west of Sandusky. The track remained in place but deteriorated into parallel streaks of rust. During the Civil War, the owners finally tore it up and shipped the metal away on boats.
The loss of train service to the northern part of Ottawa County had a predictably bad effect. Port Clinton and its western neighbor, Oak Harbor, both began to lose population. Mail for the two towns was brought by wagon from Elmore, a town on the Cleveland & Toledo’s Southern Division, twenty miles west of Port Clinton. Port Clinton and Oak Harbor became backwaters while Elmore thrived.
However, after the Civil War, northern Ohio railroads, all of which were promoted and built by local citizens, began to change from local to regional entities. Great economies of scale were possible if small railroads were converted into larger corporations. Eastern investors, seeking to take advantage of the nation’s westward expansion beyond the Mississippi River, began to gain control of rail lines between New York and Chicago because the latter town was the jumping-off point to the western United States. The Cleveland & Toledo was an important member of this eastern group of lines.
A sequence of mergers began. First, the Cleveland Painesville & Ashtabula changed its name to the Lake Shore Railroad on June 22, 1868. Then the Lake Shore Railroad combined with the Cleveland & Toledo on February 11, 1869 to form a new Lake Shore Railroad.
And finally, on May 8, 1869, the Lake Shore Railroad combined with the Michigan Southern & Northern Indiana to form the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railroad. After these mergers, instead of traveling on a patchwork of lines, a railroad passenger made the trip from New York to Chicago using only two: the New York Central, and the newly born Lake Shore & Michigan Southern.
By 1870, the citizens of Port Clinton and Oak Harbor had been without railroad service for twelve years, and they were desperate to get it back. Residents of the two towns lobbied their legislators, hounded the county commissioners, and pleaded with the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern directly. Finally, they obtained their objective. Beginning in February 1872, the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, now heavily traveled but weakly financed, began to rebuild the old Cleveland & Toledo Northern Division eastward from Millbury. Track work along the old grade was easy. By May, the line was reopened to Port Clinton, with the first regular train (a freight) leaving Toledo at 7:15 AM on May 5, 1872, and arriving in Port Clinton at 10:45 AM.
Shortly thereafter, the LS&MS reopened the Sandusky Bay Bridge to allow a return to train travel between Toledo and Cleveland along the Lake Erie shore.
The city of Cleveland had earlier given its permission for the LS&MS to bridge the Cuyahoga River, and with the addition of that structure, passengers on the old Northern Division now had access to swift and easy travel between Cleveland and Toledo―and now between New York and Chicago. Soon the western railroads would open up the entire continent to the shore of Lake Erie.
Chapter 3: A Railroad at Last
By 1872, the Marblehead Peninsula was rapidly gaining population and industry, and limestone, its chief product, became an important part of several sectors of the national economy. Alexander Clemons had been joined in the stone business by other firms, some of which were based in nearby Sandusky. They began to manufacture powdered lime in addition to quarrying and shipping limestone for use as a building product.
Powdered lime was a useful in two ways: as an ingredient for cement, and as a way to neutralize acidic soil to make crops grow more vigorously. It was created by baking raw limestone in cement kilns with burning wood or coal creating the necessary heat. The resulting powder was loaded in barrels and shipped out by water.
The rise of the steel industry after the Civil War also created a large opportunity for limestone quarry owners. Steel mills used limestone as an aid for converting molten iron into steel. The limestone (known as “flux stone” in the steel industry) was added to a blast furnace where it absorbed impurities in hot iron ore. The top eighteen feet of Marblehead limestone were ideal as a flux stone.
The growing quarries of Marblehead were not the only population magnets on the Peninsula; small communities were beginning to develop around other opportunities.
Danbury, the thwarted metropolis at the southwestern side of the Peninsula, grew up slowly around farming and then took advantage of its position as a station on the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railroad. To the northeast of Danbury were Violet and Picolo, both clusters of farms. And due north of Danbury was the proposed town of Ottawa City situated at the northern point of Catawba Island. While all of these settlements were based on economic opportunity, another community, Lakeside, was founded upon ideals.
Lakeside had its beginning in the mind of Alexander Clemons and several other local men. The picturesque, heavily wooded Lake Erie shore just west of Marblehead had always inspired Clemons, and as a staunch Methodist, he participated in and supported many temporary camp meetings in the area―retreats where a follower could escape the vulgarity and vice of town and have his faith strengthened in a natural setting through preaching and reflection.
There were scattered Methodist camp meetings in the area as early as 1842, but the crystallizing event for Lakeside seems to have occurred on August 28th and 29th, 1869. On those days, Clemons, along with several members of the Port Clinton Methodist Church, participated in a meeting of about 250 people at a site slightly northwest of Marblehead, approximately where today’s Harsh Road meets the shore.
There is evidence indicating that Clemons thereafter wanted to establish a more permanent meeting facility, but for some reason, he was unable to get such a place started.
Alexander Clemons’s idea took hold in the minds of others, though. After organizational meetings were held under the name of the Lake Shore Christian Home in 1872, the Lakeside Company was founded in 1873 to develop the Lake Erie shore west of Marblehead into a Christian summer resort. The Company formalized its relationship with the Methodist Church by donating thirty acres of land for camp meeting purposes. Alexander Clemons oversaw construction of the original dock and built a cottage for himself on the grounds, where he could be seen sitting regularly on his front porch.
Visitors arrived at Lakeside first by lake steamers that were hired to pull up at the dock twice per day, and also by rail. Conveyances from Lakeside fetched passengers from the Danbury or Gypsum stations of the newly re-opened Northern Division of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern. At Danbury, 2,090 railroad passengers disembarked in 1873 and 3,929 did so in 1874. Most Lakeside visitors still chose to arrive by water to avoid Danbury Township’s unpaved roads.
Although the economy turned sour as the 1870's progressed, Marblehead continued to gain population, pushed on by the growth of the limestone industry. The village’s stone firms still depended entirely on water transportation for outbound shipments. Lime was their largest volume product, with dimension stone for construction and shell (flux) stone for breakwater purposes coming in second and third. There is no evidence that stone for steel fluxing was shipped in any significant volume during this period, however some of the Peninsula’s timber was sent to Sandusky for use in lime kilns.
Marblehead’s quarry owners were aware that having direct access to rail transportation would greatly increase their business. Each winter, when Lake Erie iced over for three or four months, their activities necessarily stopped. At the same time, steel mills designed around rail transportation began to increase in number throughout the region. Most of them received their raw materials (iron ore, flux stone and coal) by rail.
By the beginning of the 1880’s, the rail transportation issue began to weigh heavily on the minds of Peninsula residents. From its humble beginning, Lakeside had grown into a large resort with many cottages, a large hotel, and thousands of annual visitors. The number of quarries on the Peninsula continued to increase.
There were about ten quarrying and lime kiln operations located around the Peninsula’s periphery during the early 1880’s. Largest was the Ohlemacher Lime Company, based in Sandusky, which operated a quarry and lime kiln at the eastern tip of the Peninsula slightly south of the Marblehead Lighthouse. Frederich Ohlemacher began the predecessor of the Ohlemacher Lime Company in about 1867 or 1868, and his company seems to have been the first lime producer in Sandusky. Ohlemacher moved the main thrust of his operation to Marblehead about 1874. He appears to have been an astute businessman―and he was also a fortunate one, for his quarry produced an especially fast-acting lime from the Marblehead stone. He incorporated his expanding operations on December 31, 1885.
Alexander Clemons’s descendents were plentiful in number, and many of them were engaged in the Marblehead lime and stone business. Three groups of Clemonses were going at it: Clemons Sons operated a quarry that fed a lime kiln operated by men named Chase & McFall; W.A. Clemons operated a small quarry at the northeastern tip of the Peninsula; and the Clemons Sons quarry shipped flux stone by boat and furnished limestone for a lime kiln operated by men named Gager and Gamble.
All Clemons quarries were located along the northern edge of the Peninsula beginning just east of the present day stone loading dock and ending northwest of the Marblehead Lighthouse.
Friederich Roesling ran a quarry located in Section 1, Lot 22, of Marblehead, which is property where the present day stone loading dock is built. Roesling, who was born in Bavaria, was a skilled architect and engineer who had built the first Bessemer steel works in the United States at Newburgh, near Cleveland. He came to the Peninsula in 1870 and entered the quarrying business with Michael Groh, who was killed in an 1873 accident. Roesling carried on the Marblehead business alone afterward.
J.H. James, whose family owned large portions of Marblehead land, is said to have operated a small quarry in Marblehead; Gager & Gamble (later Gager & Zollinger), based in Sandusky, operated one lime kiln; and the Marble Head Lime Company (also from Sandusky) operated a kiln in Marblehead.
There was also a small quarry operated by a man named Fox (later Gamble & Fox) located in Section 1, Lot 18, behind the present day Marblehead post office. This quarry had its own dock and was also said to have used a narrow gauge railway to carry stone eastward to the James dock for shipment.
The Hartshorn family operated a large quarry and lime kiln at the south edge of the Peninsula, just east of Meadow Brook, at the location of the Dempsey’s Landing subdivision. Their quarry appears to have started up just after the Civil War. The Hartshorns ran an inclined railway to move stone from the quarry face to a dock and kiln complex at the water.
Several attempts were made to promote a rail line to serve these businesses and open up the passenger trade to Lakeside, all of which got no further than surveying a proposed route. The most obvious idea, often repeated in newspapers and state atlases of the 1880’s, was to have the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern build a spur line from Danbury. One can easily imagine the quarry owners exerting their collective influence to bring the moneyed and well connected to the Peninsula for a firsthand look at the business possibilities. The path from the LS&MS at Danbury to the eastern part of the Peninsula was nearly level and completely dry―only seven easy miles of track were needed to bring the area into the modern age and cause a certain shower of riches upon all.
Despite this obvious opportunity, no one succeeded in building a railroad line―until Edgar H. Brennan arrived.
Edgar H. Brennan is a somewhat shadowy figure for being the man who finally delivered a transportation revolution into Peninsula hands. He may have come to northwestern Ohio from Canada. Brennan first appears in the area in 1883 when he lived in Toledo and worked as a civil engineer. Later that same year, on October 29th, he and several other Toledo men incorporated the Ohio White Sand, Stone and Railway Company. The company was formed, according to its Articles of Incorporation, “…for carrying on a general business in digging, quarrying, manufacturing, and shipping sand and stone and building and operating a railroad.” The proposed railroad’s route was to be between “…the quarry and mines of said company in section …twenty-nine, Monclova Township, Lucas County, Ohio, and the line of the Air Line Division of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad near Holland Station in said Lucas County.” Brennan became president and manager of this company.
After one or two years with the Ohio White Sand, Stone and Railway Company, Brennan’s name disappears from the officer roles, replaced by F.C. Chapin. No mention is made of the company in the 1890 Toledo Directory, so it may have perished or sold its rights to others.
By 1885, Brennan had learned of the opportunity for building a short railroad in eastern Ottawa County and became involved in promoting it.
His winning personality and engineering background allowed him to succeed where others had failed. On April 8th, 1885, a railroad called the Cleveland, Toledo & Lakeside Railway was incorporated for “…building, owning, leasing, and operating a railway, to be operated by steam or other motive power.” The railroad’s Articles of Incorporation stated: “Said railway shall be wholly located in the County of Ottawa, commencing at a point on the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway at or near Gypsum Station…running thence in an easterly direction to the end of the Peninsula, terminating at or near Marblehead Light House.”
The new railroad was authorized $150,000 of capital stock, consisting of 1,500 shares of $100 each. The incorporators were A.A. Marsh, New York, possibly a financial agent; Henry Graefe, Sandusky, affiliated with the Third National Bank; E. W. Marsh, Sandusky, affiliated with Marsh & Company, manufacturers of plaster; James D. Leash, Sandusky; and Thomas Flesher, Jr., of Cleveland, Superintendent of the Toledo Division of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railroad.
Thomas Flesher’s presence as an incorporator indicates that the LS&MS was quite aware of the potential traffic to be gained from Marblehead. Flesher may have wanted to back the line himself with the intent to sell it to the LS&MS, or he may have simply wanted to use the leverage of his position to help the Cleveland Toledo & Lakeside along. The LS&MS stood to gain lots of business because it would be the line’s only outlet to the rest of the world.
The Cleveland Toledo & Lakeside optimistically began surveying property and acquiring a right-of-way through what were then heavy timberlands, north and east from Danbury. But, despite its good start, the CL&T was under-financed and could not begin building track. Looking for a solution, Edgar Brennan asked John Newell, President of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, for financial assistance, but for some reason the LS&MS did not offer to help.
Part of Ohio’s railroad construction capital during the late 1880’s came from the East, especially from the State of Massachusetts. One of the most experienced Boston railroad investment syndicates was headed by Hiram Albro Blood, who, since 1880, had controlled the narrow gauge Connotton Valley Railroad (later renamed the Cleveland & Canton), a coal-hauler, in eastern Ohio. On John Newell’s recommendation, Edgar Brennan approached Hiram Blood for financial help with the Cleveland Toledo & Lakeside.
The man Brennan met with―bearded, 53-year-old Hiram Blood―was a full time resident of Fitchburg, Massachusetts. He had first entered the railroad business in the year 1865 by opening a railroad repair shop in Fitchburg. His excellent business skills and forceful personally soon helped him to become Superintendent of the Fitchburg & Worcester Railroad, where he oversaw its extension and consolidation into the Boston Clinton & Fitchburg, and Old Colony Railroad systems. When the Panic of 1873 badly lowered his elevated financial standing, Blood joined forces with William J. Rotch, a large Old Colony shareholder from New Bedford, Massachusetts, to open and extend railroads in Ohio.
Although there is no written record of their meeting, Edgar Brennan successfully persuaded Hiram Blood that his short line would make a good investment. After finding the necessary financial capital, on April 17, 1886, Blood and his compatriots incorporated the Lakeside & Marblehead Railroad Company to purchase the property, rights, and franchises of the Cleveland, Toledo & Lakeside Railway. The new corporation began with a token paid-in capital of $1,000.
The L&M’s incorporators were Hiram A. Blood and his son, Charles H. Blood, both of Fitchburg, Massachusetts, investors; W.H. Brunner, Cleveland, Ticket Agent of the Connotton Valley Railroad; Henry A Kennedy, Canton, connected with the Connotton Valley Railroad; and Eben T. Blood, Cleveland. Eben T. Blood was Hiram A. Blood’s other son; he was variously listed in Cleveland city directories as “clerk” and “construction agent.”
During the summer of 1886, Hiram Blood worked out the L&M’s financing while Edgar Brennan assumed the presidency of the line. Brennan continued to acquire right-of-way from property owners and also from the Cleveland Toledo & Lakeside. Of the 72 parcels of land making up the L&M’s original right-of-way, 20 were previously owned by the CT&L. A few of Marblehead’s quarry owners donated land to the railroad, while others were so eager for service that they made cash donations without receiving any interest payments or stock ownership of the line. The Lakeside & Marblehead filed a Certificate of Stock Subscription with the State of Ohio on August 23, 1886 certifying that 10 percent of the railroad’s stock had been subscribed and paid for.
On September 28, 1886, the Cleveland Toledo & Lakeside shareholders formally sold their property and franchises to the Lakeside & Marblehead. With the finances in order, the L&M immediately proceeded with construction beginning at Danbury.
Grading and tracklaying over the Peninsula’s flat, dry terrain went quickly and easily during the fall of 1886. The Danbury correspondent of the Ottawa County Democrat wrote in September:
The grading of the Lakeside & Marblehead Ry. is being completed along its route. From sixteen to twenty teams are daily engaged in the work. The Company has the writer’s best wishes in their new undertaking, as it will be a great benefit to little Danbury as well as Ottawa County. The school boys have already made the initials L & M Ry., to stand for ‘Little Money Ry.,’ but we hope to the contrary, especially form [sic] the station, which will be placed near Bandeline’s hall, will be Big Money Ry.
Financing was based on an additional $149,000 of paid-in capital from shareholders, raising the total amount of capital stock to $150,000. To this was added $110,000 from 30-year, 5-percent-interest, mortgage coupon bonds. Total corporate liabilities were thus $260,000.
The L&M’s right-of-way was fairly straight and level. Beginning at its connection with the LS&MS at Danbury, the L&M paralleled the larger line in a southeasterly direction for several hundred feet, then turned northeastward for about 3,000 feet, crossing Bay Shore Road. The line then shortly turned east and passed through Violet, which was located at the crossing of what is now Church Road.
The track continued eastward for 5,550 feet, then turned northeast, passing through Picolo (also spelled “Piccolo” or “Piccola”), located at today’s Englebeck Road. Continuing in the same direction, it crossed today’s Hartshorn Road, then intersected what would later become Auto Ferry (Quarry) Road. Here the track ascended a short 1.2 percent grade before shortly turning due north, crossing Port Clinton-Marblehead Road (now State Route163), and turning east to pass along the southern part of the Lakeside Association grounds. The line arrived at the station in Marblehead by closely paralleling State Route 163, then continued east for approximately one-half mile to reach the Point Kilns near the eastern tip of the Peninsula.