Station: Harrison, MI

Harrison was created in central Clare County when the board of supervisors selected the location to be the county seat in 1877. The village was platted by the Flint & Pere Marquette railroad. It became a village in 1879 and a city in 1891.

Photo info: Top, Flint & Pere Marquette engine 61 on the Harrison branch about 1890. [Clare County clerk collection]. 2nd photo, the only known photo of the PM Harrison depot, date unknown. [PM Archives, Bob Warrick Collection]. 3rd photo, the Harrison Branch mixed train time table, date unknown. [Bob Warrick collection].

Notes

The Pere Marquette had a 60' hand-operated turntable at Harrison, which was in place as of 1942.

Scheduled mixed trains on this branch were down to two days a week in the final days of this branch line. [WAR]

Time Line

1880. The F&PM Harrison branch arrives at its namesake town. [MRL]

1891. Harrison grew quickly and by 1891 it was incorporated as the county’s second city. [WAR]

 1936. Joe Newbound has retired from duty after 34 years service with the PM system. He is 66 years of age and has a son, Harold, employed as a telegraph operator in a railroad tower at Carleton, MI. He disclaims any skill as a telegraph operator. He "got by" in his work by taking it "slow and easy". He started as a station helper at Mt. Morris in 1897, and then worked at stations at Gera, North Bradley and Birch Run. In 1902, we was assigned to Harrison. Communications with the dispatcher and central offices of the road was then by telegraph, a method which now has been discontinued in favor of the telephone. His first job in Harrison was to bill out 44 carloads of tanbark. It had been removed from hemlock logs cut in the vicinity of Moddersville, and driven down the Muskegon river to be used in the paper mills at Muskegon. The bark had been loaded on the cars at Leota but the billing office for that extension was at Harrison.

For several years recently, there has been but one train each week on this line, coming in on Tuesdays. This train was operated by a crew that ran out of Mt. Pleasant to Beaverton and return. Recently an extra train was added to haul gravel for the new US-27.

Although officials of the railroad system seldom come to Harrison and no passengers call at the old ticket window for transportation to distant points, Newbund still has the regalia of his office. In a box high on the shelf in the station is the agent's cap, as clean and bright as it was many years ago when regulations required that when the train pulled in the agent should be on the platform with his cap on his head. [LSJ-1936-0927]

1944. The PM line was removed between Clare and Harrison. [MRL]