Station: Mancelona, MI

Mancelona in Antrim County was settled in 1969. It was incorporated as a village in 1867. [MPN] It became a station stop on the Grand Rapids & Indiana railroad on their line from Grand Rapids to Mackinaw City.

Photo info: Top, an early morning view of the Grand Rapids & Indiana Mancelona depot. [CMUL]. 2nd photo, a 2004 view of the GR&I (later PRR) depot at Mancelona. [Alan Loftis]. 3rd photo, remnants of a train wreck at Mancelona. 4th photo, a Grand Rapids & Indiana snow plow stops for inspection at Mancelona in 1903.

Notes

From the Grand Rapids Eagle, May 30, 1980: Yesterday afternoon, a train of fifty-one loaded ore cars were coming down a grade just north of here when a draw bar on the fourth car from the engine pulled out and dropped on the track. Thirty-nine cars were piled up on the [GR&I] main track in a space of a hundred feet. Men worked all night laying track around the wreck but were driven off by a very heavy rain storm. Passenger trains were delayed about twelve hours. It will take two or three days to remove the wreck. No one was hurt. [MIHX8]

Time Line

1888. March. David Ward's shrewdness has often been narrated and is full of new tricks. When he saw a butter dish factory erected at Mancelona, he calculated the amount of timber which the industry would require and quietly bought all the adjacent timber he could get, and the owners of the factory will be compelled to buy from him at a good price. [CCA-1888-0315]

1901. March 21. A sleet storm and heavy wind blocked railroad wheels by drifting snow and freezing on it. All communications was severed by ice on the telegraph wires. A GR&I passenger train stalled directly in front of Mancelona station and three engines were unable to move it. The wire went down and officials have no knowledge of any of their trains, though many are past due. The tie-up is the worst of the winter. [KGAZ-1901-0321]

1903. This was an interlocked crossing of the GR&I and the Mancelona & Northwestern railroad, likely a private logging railroad. [MCR-1904]

1949. Lutz Schramm Co. operates pickle processing plants at East Jordan, Elmira, Bellaire, Alden, Alba and Mancelona. The latter is the largest in the area with a capacity of 140,000 bushels. Crews have been on the job 18 hours a day to keep pace with the inflow of pickles. [FLJ-1949-0818]