SANDUSKY, PIONEER LINK BETWEEN SAIL AND
RAIL
by LEOLA M. STEWART
Lakewood High School, Lakewood, Ohio
Sandusky, Ohio, located on a large bay
indenting the shore line
of Lake Erie and possessing one of the
finest natural harbors on
the Great Lakes, was the first port west
of the Appalachians to
profit from the advantages afforded by
the combination of two
means of transportation: sail and rail.
It became the lake terminus
of two railroads, the Mad River and Lake
Erie, which made the
first connection between Cincinnati and
Lake Erie, and the Sandusky,
Mansfield, and Newark, which extended
southeastward through the
state, and it built up a thriving
commerce fed by them. By the early
1850's its importance as a transshipment
center made Sandusky
second only to Cleveland, the terminus
of the Ohio and Erie Canal,
located sixty miles to the east. But the
combination of sail (literally
steam) and rail upon which
Sandusky depended was to be replaced
as the most significant facility of
transportation by the great rail-
road systems running east and west,
leaving Sandusky a thriving
minor port far outdistanced by
Cleveland, Detroit, Toledo, and
Chicago.
Before the advent of the railroad
Sandusky was an important
transfer point for passengers and
freight passing through Buffalo
and over the Erie Canal. A stage line
operated from there to Mans-
field and Delaware after 1822, with
travel greatly increased after
the opening of the Erie Canal; a second
line was opened in 1826-27
through Fremont, Tiffin, Urbana, and
Springfield.1 Charles Dickens
on his tour of the West in 1842 took the
boat from Sandusky.2 In the
autumn of 1848 troops for the Oregon
service were moved from
New York to Jefferson Barracks in St.
Louis by steamboat, canal
boat, and lake steamer to Sandusky,
thence by railroad to Urbana.
They marched overland to the Little
Miami Railroad on which they
1 W. W. Williams, pub., History of the Firelands
Comprising Huron and Erie
Counties, Ohio (Cleveland, 1879), 435.
2 H. L. Peeke, Centennial History of
Erie County, Ohio (Cleveland, 1925), I, 80.
227
228 OHIO
ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
traveled to Cincinnati where they took
the boat to St. Louis.3 The
westward tide of immigration by way of
the Erie Canal flowed
through Sandusky in 1849 "in larger
numbers than through any
other city on Lake Erie, west of
Buffalo."4
In 1850 Sandusky was a thriving city of
5,000 persons.5 Its
large public square fronting on the lake
was surrounded by sub-
stantial and handsome business buildings
of limestone, a material
abundant in the region.6 A
newspaper survey claimed a larger
population, distributed as follows:
Americans, 3,500; Germans,
2,100; and Irish, 1,800.7 Among its
foremost enterprising citizens
was Eleutheros Cooke, who might have
been known only as the
father of Jay Cooke, the banker, but of
whom his son said: "To
my father and the Western Reserve belong
the honor of being the
pioneers in railroad matters."8
The impetus to early promotion of
railroad building into the
hinterland of Sandusky in two directions
came from the desire
to offset the advantage accruing to
Cleveland from the Ohio Canal.
Through the efforts of a group of
citizens headed by Eleutheros
Cooke, a charter was obtained from the
Ohio legislature in January
1832 for the Mad River and Lake Erie
Railroad Company to con-
struct a line from Dayton to
Springfield, Urbana, Bellefontaine,
Upper Sandusky, and Sandusky. The
company was organized Feb-
ruary 22, 1832, being the only railroad
corporation then in existence
in Ohio.9 Officers of the
company during the first years included
men from Dayton, Urbana, and other areas
through which its route
lay,10 but the larger number
resided in Sandusky and included
Judge Ebenezer Lane, who eventually left
the Ohio Supreme Court
bench to engage in the railroad
business,11 Oran Follett, and Rush
Sloane.12
3 Frederic L. Paxson, "The
Railroads of the 'Old Northwest' before the Civil
War," in Wisconsin Academy of
Sciences, Arts, and Letters, Transactions, XVII (1914),
Part I, 252, cited from Niles'
Register, September 20, 1848.
4 Weekly Register (Sandusky), August 12, 1854.
5 Seventh Census of the United
States, 1850 (Washington, D. C.,
1853), 826.
6 Henry Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio (Cincinnati, 1907),
I, 567.
7 Weekly Register, December 31,
1851.
8 Jay
Cooke, "The War of the Rebellion, How Financed," in Firelands
Pioneer,
n.s., XIII (1900), 640.
9 Peeke, History of Erie County, I,
392. The Mad River flows into the Miami
at Dayton.
10 L. C. Aldrich, ed., History of
Erie County (Syracuse, N. Y., 1889), 264-265.
11 Howe, Historical Collections, I,
577.
12 Aldrich, History of Erie County, 265-266.
SANDUSKY 229
The first fifteen miles of the road were
opened to Bellevue in
1838, but it took ten years longer to
complete that first important
all-rail connection with Cincinnati by
means of a junction at Dayton
with the Little Miami Railroad,13 a
total rail line of 174 miles.14
By 1850 her rival, Cleveland, had rail
connections in the same
direction only to Shelby, a distance of
67 miles.15
Sandusky's second railroad company was
chartered March 9,
1835, and after numerous consolidations
with other short line
companies became the Sandusky,
Mansfield, and Newark Railroad
Company.l6 This line was
opened to Mansfield by 1846 and to
Newark by 1851, a distance of 116
miles,17 and immediately carried
heavy passenger and freight traffic.
The opening of the decade 1850-60
brought an enormous in-
crease in railroad building, and maps
for those years show a net-
work of lines throughout Ohio, Indiana,
Illinois, and Michigan.
This was accompanied by accelerated
agricultural and industrial
development through the Middle West.
Sandusky then faced a real
struggle for maintenance of the initial
advantage which it held by
virtue of its early rail connections.
Other lake ports such as Toledo,
to which the Miami and Erie Canal was
completed in 1845, began
to offer competition to Sandusky.18
The strongest rivalry arose between
Sandusky and Cleveland
when the Cleveland and Columbus Railroad
was completed to Co-
lumbus in 1851, there joining the
Columbus and Xenia line which
ran to Dayton. There a connection with
the Little Miami Railroad
gave a second through route to
Cincinnati.19 Competition between
the two lake ports for transshipment of
the rail and lake-borne
freight and passengers to and from the East became intense. At
the eastern end of Lake Erie connections
were made at Buffalo
13 Paxson, loc. cit., 255.
14 Eighth Census of the United States, 1860: Statistics of the United
States
(Washington, D. C., 1866), 329.
15 Ibid., and Paxson, loc. cit., map, 253.
16 Peeke, History of
Erie County, I, 390.
17 Eugene H. Roseboom, The Civil War
Era in Ohio 1850-1873, Carl Wittke,
ed., The History of the State of Ohio
(6 vols., Columbus, 1941-44), IV (1944), 110;
Paxson, loc. cit., 269. This line
later became a part of the Baltimore and Ohio system.
18 E. L. Bogart, "Early Canal
Traffic and Railroad Competition in Ohio," in
Journal of Political Economy, XXI (1913), 58-59; also, William G. Gephart, Trans-
portation and Industrial Development
in the Middle West (Columbia
University
Studies in History, Economics and
Public Law, XXXIV, New York, 1909),
204.
19 Data on rail connections based on Encyclopedia
Americana, XXIII, 174, and
Roseboom, The Civil War Era, 110.
230
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
with either the Erie Canal or the New
York Central. In 1851 the
New York and Erie Railroad reached
Dunkirk, on Lake Erie,
furnishing a rival route to the New York
Central and another outlet
for the commerce upon which Sandusky
depended.
East and west rail connections along the
shore of Lake Erie
progressed rapidly between 1851 and
1854, threatening competition
with the lake commerce of the port
cities. A railroad was creeping
eastward from Cleveland to Painesville,
to Ashtabula, to Conneaut,
reaching the Ohio-Pennsylvania line by
the end of 1852, Erie, Penn-
sylvania, during 1853, and Buffalo in
1854. This line established
connections with the Cleveland,
Columbus, and Cincinnati Railroad
and the New York Central, the whole by
this time, "attaining the
character of a great trunk line."20
Westward toward Sandusky the
Cleveland and Toledo Railroad extended
61 miles during 1853,
while at the same time a second road
westward from Cleveland
through Grafton, missing Sandusky,
approached Toledo. Sandusky
citizens were alert to the danger of
losing traffic and built the
Junction Railroad connecting their city
with Toledo. The contract
for that road was let in November 1850,
and in July 1853 the first
train ran on its tracks.21 By
1854 complete rail connections were
established between Toledo and the
eastern ports of Buffalo and
Dunkirk.
A sharp competition during the years
1852-54 centered between
the two steamboat-rail lines, known as
the East and West routes,
which ran between Buffalo and
Cincinnati. The West Route was
the older, using lake steamers to
Sandusky and the Mad River and
Lake Erie Railroad thence to
southwestern Ohio. The East Route
used the steamers to Cleveland and the
Cleveland, Columbus, and
Cincinnati Railroad through Ohio. The
eventual victory of the
Cleveland interests had so definite a
bearing on the economic well-
being of Sandusky that some details of
the fight carried on during
1854 are worth describing.
The Mad River and Lake Erie Railroad had
paid dividends of
twelve per cent in 184922 but recognized
the threat to its profits
20 Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati
Railroad Company, Annual Report, 1853,
8, and ibid., 1854, 11.
21 Paxson, loc. cit., 270; Peeke, History of Erie
County, I, 397.
22 Mad River and Lake Erie Railroad Company, Annual Report,
1849.
SANDUSKY 231
as soon as the Cleveland-Columbus route
was opened.23 In 1853
both companies acquired two passenger
steamships for direct service
to and from Buffalo.24 The St.
Lawrence and the Mississippi served
the port of Sandusky, and extravagant
praise as to the comfort and
convenience of traveling on them was
recorded in the local press.25
Although the New York Central and the
New York and Erie were
competing lines through New York state,
in 1853 the New York
Central was able to enter into an
agreement with the two Ohio rail-
road companies concerning lake steamers.
The annual report of the
Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati
Railroad for 1854 stated that
"it was deemed indispensable to
provide a line of first class steam
boats between Cleveland and Buffalo. The
New York and Erie Co.
having built two boats expressly adapted
to that trade, an arrange-
ment was entered into . . . to use the
two boats for the joint and
equal benefit of the New York and Erie,
the New York Central, and
the line of roads between Lake Erie and
Cincinnati."26 This clearly
shows a working agreement between the
New York Central and the
Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati
Railroad.
A general agreement as to equal rates of
fares and freight
rates between New York and all places on
or west of Lake Erie
was reached at a convention held in
Buffalo in 1853 attended by
representatives of the Michigan Central,
Michigan Southern, the
Mad River and Lake Erie, the Cleveland,
Columbus, and Cincinnati,
the New York Central, the New York and
Erie, and the steamboat
lines on Lake Erie.27 This agreement gave way to cutthroat
methods
of competition during 1854. The fare
between Buffalo and
Cincinnati on the Sandusky line was
$4.00, meals and staterooms
23 Ibid., 1851. By 1853, the Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati
Railroad
Company was doing twice the business of
the Mad River and Lake Erie. The Annual
Report, 1853,
of the latter gives its total receipts as $540,618; those of the former were
slightly over $1,000,000, as given in
the Weekly Register, July 23, 1854.
24 Mad River and Lake Erie Railroad
Company, Annual Report, 1853, 9;
Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati
Railroad Company, Annual Report, 1854, 11.
25 Weekly Register, July 8, 22, 1854.
26 Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati
Railroad Company, Annual Report,
1854, 11.
27 Caroline MacGill, Transportation
in the United States before 1860 (Wash-
ington, D. C., 1917), from New York and Erie Railroad
Company, Annual Report,
1853, 53.
The Weekly Register, June 3,
1854, said: "The two lines harmonized for a
single year by an agreement as to fares
and a division of profits on through traffic."
The Register, June 10, 1854, quoted the Dayton
Journal as follows: "Profits were
divided on the basis of passengers
carried on the Lake steamers of each line. It was
expressly agreed that no influence
should be used by the agents of the New York
line to give direction to the travel either
by one route or the other."
232
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
on the steamers included, when the Cleveland
Herald announced
that the fare for the trip via the
Cleveland boats and the Cleveland,
Columbus, and Cincinnati Railroad would
be $3.50. The fare on
the West line was thereupon reduced to
$3.00.28 Two weeks later
tickets from New York to Cincinnati via
Sandusky could be pur-
chased for $11.00, while the rate
through Cleveland was $16.00.29
A reduction of way and through freight
rates averaging ten per cent
also was made on the West Route,
effective June 1, 1854, in order
"to retain beyond competition the
carrying of all kinds of mer-
chandise to and from Cincinnati."30
The importance of Sandusky as a
connecting point is shown by
a railway schedule of 1854 which listed
ten trains leaving daily:
three on the Sandusky, Mansfield, and
Newark, from which terminal
point connections were made with
Columbus; three on the Lake Erie
and Mad River; three on the Cleveland
and Toledo; and one on a
branch line to Bellevue, Tiffin, and
Findlay.31
The New York Central and its affiliates
had methods of dealing
with competition besides rate
cutting. The Dayton Journal said
that "the New York Central lines
refuse to receive the through
tickets for New York issued via Dayton
and Sandusky. The Little
Miami [the line from Cincinnati to
Dayton and Columbus] is bound
not to ticket passengers through to New
York by the Pennsylvania
route."32 The Pennsylvania
Railroad had reached Crestline, Ohio,
by this time and offered a rival route
to the East that competed
with the business of both the Sandusky
and Cleveland rail and
steamer lines.
When the agreement was made in 1853
between the East and
West lines to allocate profits according
to the number of passengers
carried on the steamers, referring
mainly to traffic to Cincinnati, the
rail lines paralleling the lake shore
were not completed. When
28 Weekly Register, June 24, 1854.
29 Ibid., July 8, 1854. In her Transportation in the United
States before 1860,
569, MacGill states that at a convention
of railway executives held in Cincinnati in
1856, it was agreed that rates between
New York and a common point in the West
were not to exceed two cents a mile for
a through ticket, which made the New York
to Cincinnati fare $18.50.
30 Weekly Register, June 3, 1854.
31 Ibid., June 17, 1854.
32 Quoted
in Weekly Register, June 10, 1854. An earlier article from the
Dayton Journal, quoted in the Register, June 3, 1854, stated
that "both the New York
and Erie and the New York Central"
had agreements with the Cleveland, Columbus,
and Cincinnati Railroad to induce them
to refuse through tickets from the West Route.
SANDUSKY 233
these went into operation, competition
between them and the
Sandusky steamers also became intense.
The agents of the Mad
River and Lake Erie Railroad, which
owned the passenger steamers,
advertised in the Buffalo papers, under
the heading "Caution to
Travellers," as follows:
Passengers from the East to Cleveland
are informed that the Central Rail-
road monopoly, in order to force travel
on the State Line R. R. [Buffalo to
Cleveland, later the Lake Shore] have
compelled baggage agents to refuse
baggage checks from passengers for those
splendid lake steamers, the
Mississippi and the St. Lawrence to be collected on the cars
.... Passengers
are therefor cautioned to purchase
tickets to Buffalo only, where they can
take their choice of routes and avail
themselves of the reduced fare on the lake.
Cabin passage from Buffalo to Cleveland,
only one dollar. Tickets on sale on
board the steamers.33
This competition had an effect on the
business of the Cleveland,
Columbus, and Cincinnati Railroad
Company. The income from
passengers in 1854 was less than that in
1853, and the loss was
sustained on all passengers, as those
traveling from either Cincinnati
or Buffalo to any intervening point
purchased the cheaper through
tickets and used such coupons as they
required and destroyed or
sold the remainder. The expenses of the
company were materially
increased by the employment of numerous
agents to counteract
the efforts of those employed by the
other line. But the "utmost
harmony" prevailed between the
Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincin-
nati and the officials and agents of the
Columbus and Xenia and the
Little Miami railroads. Freight receipts, however, increased 44
per cent in 1854 over 1853.34
The Mad River and Lake Erie Railroad,
the pioneer rail link
between the lake and the Ohio River, was
unable to compete success-
fully with the growing consolidation of
the New York Central inter-
ests. From receipts of $540,618 in 1853,
the net receipts dropped
to $225,882 in 1858-59, and to $109,646
in 1860.35 The panic of
1857 had its effect, as did the opening
of a railroad from Dayton to
Toledo which diverted from Sandusky much
of the business from
the south. The Mad River and Lake Erie
passed through a series
33 Weekly Register, June 3, 1854, citing the Buffalo papers.
34 Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati
Railroad Company, Annual Report, 1855.
35 Sandusky,
Dayton, and Cincinnati Railroad Company, Annual Reports, 1859,
1860, 1861.
234
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
of financial reorganizations and
attempts at agreements with the
Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati
line, went into receivership in
1865, and finally became a part of the
New York Central in 1890.36
Sandusky's importance as a transshipment
point in the early
1850's did not rest wholly on its rail
connection with Cincinnati.
A wide variety of products was received
by way of the Sandusky,
Mansfield, and Newark Railroad. Receipts
in one week included
wheat, flour, wool, livestock, pork,
tobacco, ashes, iron, leather, and
whiskey.37 The growing importance of the
livestock trade with the
East was shown by the records of
loadings for Dunkirk and Buffalo.
In one week in 1854, 4,500 head of
livestock were shipped eastward
from the port of Sandusky.38 This
amounted to one fifth of the
weekly supply of the New York
market. In the fall of that
year
one day's loadings totaled 1,480 sheep
and 2,350 hogs.39 An agent
was quoted as saying that "more
hogs, cattle, and sheep were for-
warded from Sandusky than from Cleveland
and Toledo together."40
Between 1850 and 1858 commerce in terms
of tonnage of all
lake ports increased enormously; that of
Cleveland increased 102
per cent, while that of Sandusky
increased 130 per cent.41 In
1854
the Sandusky harbor was handling
commerce estimated at
$50,000,000 a year, mostly coastwise
although $90,000 in customs
was collected in one year.42
One article that had bulked large
in Cleveland commerce since
the opening of the Ohio Canal was
missing from that of Sandusky,
namely, coal. Mines were opened in the southeastern part of the
state about 1846 to which Sandusky had
no access until the
Sandusky, Mansfield, and Newark Railroad
was completed to
36 Ibid., and Aldrich, History of Erie County, 266-267;
Peeke, History of Erie
County, I, 395, 452.
37 Weekly Register, July 5, 1853.
38 Ibid., September 2, 1854.
39 Ibid., October
14, 1854.
40 Ibid., September 23, 1854. These figures indicate the trend of
change in
agricultural productions in Ohio
mentioned in Arthur C. Cole, The Irrepressible
Conflict (New York, 1934), 109. In 1850 the New York beef market
depended on
New York and New England supplies. As
the wheat belt moved westward to
Illinois greater diversification took
place in Ohio, with an increase in meat production
for the eastern market, as well as for
the packing industry of Chicago.
41 Ohio Commissioner of Statistics, Annual
Report, 1860, 32.
42 Weekly Register, July 22, 1854. Harold U. Faulkner, in his American
Economic History (New York, 1935), 352, quotes a government report of
1852
estimating the coastwise exports of the
Great Lakes at $132,000,000 and the total
commerce at $312,000,000. This gives a
very general basis of comparison as to the
importance of Sandusky's commerce in the
early 1850's.
SANDUSKY 235
Newark in 1851, there to make
connections with the Central Ohio
Railroad, a part of the Baltimore and
Ohio system. However, the
first shipment of coal by this road to
Sandusky was received in
October 1854.43 Today coal is
one of the chief articles of export
from Sandusky, the Pennsylvania Railroad
having large docks
there. In 1940 Sandusky ranked fourth
among the Great Lakes
ports in tonnage of exports, most of
which was in coal.
An increase in iron foundries and
machine shops was reported
as soon as the coal regions were made
accessible, but there were
obstacles to Sandusky's profiting from
the Lake Superior ores,
made easily available after the opening
of the "Soo" Canal in 1855.
Chief among these was the fact that the
Pittsburgh area with its
inexhaustible coal was becoming the
steel center, and Cleveland
possessed the most direct rail
connections with that city.
Sandusky's prosperity had been initiated
by its position as a
distributing and transshipping point on
the lake. A study of the
faster growing cities of Cleveland,
Toledo, Detroit, and Chicago
shows that shipping was not enough.
Sandusky's relegation to a
minor city illustrated the victory of
"rail over sail" and the neces-
sity for a broad economic base to insure
large-scale urban growth.
The movement of the population westward
made east and west lines
of transportation of major importance
rather than the north-south
ones that gave Sandusky an advantage in
1850. Four rail lines that
competed for the east-west through
traffic were operating in 1860:
the Canada route, the Lake Shore Road,
the Pennsylvania and the
Baltimore and Ohio. These competed
successfully with the lake
trade that was so important to Sandusky.
The consolidation carried
on by the major lines. especially the
New York Central, adversely
affected the two railroads in which
Sandusky citizens had a particu-
lar interest. With the opening up of the
trans-Mississippi region,
Chicago became the major rail and lake
shipping center. Toledo
achieved better rail connections, had a
larger hinterland from which
to draw, and fewer nearby inland towns
competing for business.
Cleveland's greater accessibility to
coal in eastern Ohio and Pennsyl-
vania gave her a distinct advantage.
43 Weekly Register, October 28, 1854.
236
OHIO ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Sandusky's prosperity today depends
largely on the develop-
ment of the peculiar resources of
climate and soil that have fostered
the growing of grapes and the wine
industry-a source of wealth
hardly considered in 1850 when its
citizens based their hopes on
the development of rail transportation
and lake commerce.