Review

Abstract

156 Michigan Historical Review the American debacles at Chateauguay and Crysler‘s Farm. The occasional witty asides include Lieutenant Reynold M. Kirby‘s comment that despite his modest rank he received a better accommodation than two captains at an upstate New York tavern. He attributed his good fortune to his ―sword & epaulette,‖ which also ―attracted the notice of the rosy faced nymph that prepared our meal & who conducted me to the room I occupied‖ (p. 200). Two of the four enlisted-men‘s memoirs concern operations in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Upper Canada. Private Nathaniel Vernon of the Pittsburgh Blues participated in the raid on the Indian village of Mississinewa, Indiana, and later in the defense of Fort Meigs in Ohio. Private William Greathouse of the Kentucky Volunteers was part of General William Henry Harrison‘s amphibious force that crossed Lake Erie in bateaux and marched to the Thames River where it destroyed the Forty-first Regiment of Foot and the Indian alliance created by Tecumseh. When the famous Shawnee war chief fell mortally wounded, Greathouse heard the Indians give ―the loudest yells I ever heard from human beings and that ended the fight‖ (p. 243). Although it is probable that only the most avid War of 1812 devotees will purchase these high-priced paperbacks for their personal libraries, let us hope that most major public and university libraries will acquire them as they are both very useful reference works. David Curtis Skaggs Professor Emeritus of History Bowling Green State University H. Roger Grant. Twilight Rails: The Final Era of Railroad Building in the Midwest. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010. Pp. 275. Index. Notes. Photographs. Cloth, $39.95. It is a well-known fact that railroad mileage peaked in the United States in 1916. After that, more miles each year were abandoned than were built. But it is sometimes forgotten that there was new construction after 1916. These late additions included a few routes that remain vital pieces of today‘s railroad network—the Seaboard‘s extension into Miami and the Great Northern‘s extension into California come to mind. There was another category of new railroads, however, that H. Roger Grant calls the ―twilight rails.‖ These were Book Reviews 157 independent short lines, which were not part of the major systems but built by local initiatives and a lot of boosterism from communities left off the original network. People in these areas felt their very economic life depended on getting connected to the rail system. We know that a network of paved roads was right around the corner, which would render this kind of short-line railroad obsolete almost before it was finished, but people in the first two decades of the twentieth century could not know the future. ―Prior to all-weather roads and the triumph of internal combustion vehicles, the railroads were magic carpets that bound localities to the Nation‖ (p. 1). Grant has chosen a sampling of eleven midwestern railroads that fit the category of twilight rails, two of them in Michigan. Most of these latecomers did not last long. They were generally undercapitalized, poorly built, and soon proved they could not compete with paved roads. But all of them were built through local initiatives, and for an important moment in their areas‘ economic life, boosted land values and brought hope to local people and businesses that these communities would forever be vibrant and forward looking. The Michigan lines were conceived by the Handy Brothers of Bay City, Michigan. Their initial foray into railroads was to serve the immediate needs of their coal mines around Bay City. They built the Pontiac, Oxford, and Northern (known as the ―Polly Ann‖) in the 1880s up the center of the Thumb and sold it to Canada‘s Grand Trunk in 1909 at a handsome profit. At that point, Bay City industry decided it needed a direct connection to Port Huron, believing the recent completion of the Grand Trunk‘s St. Clair tunnels would open up a vast market in trade with the Atlantic Seaboard and Europe. The Detroit, Bay City & Western was begun in 1907. It reached Caro, twenty-nine miles away, by 1910, and then pushed slowly across...