The Ionia and Lansing Rail Road is a defunct railroad which operated in the state of

Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...

in the 1860s and 1870s. The company incorporated on November 13, 1865; the investors hailed primarily from

Lansing Lansing () is the capital of the U.S. state of Michigan. It is mostly in Ingham County, although portions of the city extend west into Eaton County and north into Clinton County. The 2020 census placed the city's population at 112,644, makin ...

Ionia Ionia () was an ancient region on the western coast of Anatolia, to the south of present-day Izmir. It consisted of the northernmost territories of the Ionian League of Greek settlements. Never a unified state, it was named after the Ionian ...

and

Portland Portland most commonly refers to: * Portland, Oregon, the largest city in the state of Oregon, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States * Portland, Maine, the largest city in the state of Maine, in the New England region of the northeas ...

. The original charter called for a line from Ionia to Lansing; on January 13, 1869 this was amended with a much grander vision: a line from Lansing to the mouth of the Pentwater River at Pentwater, on the shores of

Lake Michigan Lake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is the second-largest of the Great Lakes by volume () and the third-largest by surface area (), after Lake Superior and Lake Huron. To the east, its basin is conjoined with that o ...

. In late 1869 the I&L opened a line between Lansing and Ionia; the first trains ran in December. In September 1870 the line extended further north and west past

Belding Belding is a city in Ionia County, Michigan, Ionia County in the U.S. state of Michigan, completely surrounded by Otisco Township, Michigan. The population was 5,757 at the United States Census, 2010, 2010 census. History In 1838, six years bef ...

to Greenville. That year the road was bought out by

James F. Joy James Frederick Joy (December 2, 1810 – September 24, 1896) was an American railroad magnate and politician in Detroit, Michigan. Beginnings He was born in Durham, New Hampshire, the son of James Joy (1778–1857) of Groton, Massachusetts ...

and other

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at th ...

investors who already controlled the Detroit, Howell & Lansing; on March 16, 1871 the two companies consolidated to form the Detroit, Lansing & Lake Michigan. The I&L's finances appear to have been rocky throughout its short history. As the author of a study on the

Pere Marquette Railway The Pere Marquette Railway operated in the Great Lakes region of the United States and southern parts of Ontario in Canada. It had trackage in the states of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and the Canadian province of Ontario. Its primary connections in ...

noted:

The Ionia and Lansing Railroad (sic) had difficulty in getting sufficient money to finish its construction and its credit was so bad that it received $770,000 of cash out of a bond issue with a par value of $1,820,000. Later on, in order to complete the line, it had to take on a second mortgage on its property from Lansing to Greenville.

Even as late as 1900, when the Pere Marquette consolidated the I&L's successor, the Detroit, Grand Rapids & Western, it assumed some of the old debt load. Very little of the I&L's original Lansing–Greenville line exists today. In 1942 the Pere Marquette abandoned the Warden–Kidd segment; between 1972 and 1986 the C&O, successor the Pere Marquette, abandoned the Warden–Eagle segment, leaving only the Kidd–Greenville and Grand Ledge–Lansing segments. The latter is owned by

CSX CSX Transportation , known colloquially as simply CSX, is a Class I freight railroad operating in the Eastern United States and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec. The railroad operates approximately 21,000 route miles () of track. ...

, while the former is owned by the

Mid-Michigan Railroad The Mid-Michigan Railroad is a railroad owned by Genesee & Wyoming. It operates 39.8 miles of track in Michigan. History The company incorporated in 1987, for the purpose of acquiring railway lines from the CSX Corporation. The company was owned ...

, a

RailAmerica RailAmerica, Inc., based in Jacksonville, Florida, was a holding company of a number of short-line railroads and regional railroads in the United States and Canada. In 2007, RailAmerica was acquired by Fortress Investment Group. Before that, it t ...

company. In December 2007 Mid-Michigan petitioned the

Surface Transportation Board The Surface Transportation Board (STB) of the United States is a federal, bipartisan, independent adjudicatory board. The STB was established on January 1, 1996, to assume some of the regulatory functions that had been administered by the Intersta ...

to abandon the Lowell–Greenville section of its line, which includes Greenville–Kidd. The grade was converted to a

rail trail A rail trail is a shared-use path on railway right of way. Rail trails are typically constructed after a railway has been abandoned and the track has been removed, but may also share the right of way with active railways, light rail, or streetcar ...

Notes

References

* * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Ionia Lansing Railroad Railway companies established in 1866 Railway companies disestablished in 1871 Defunct Michigan railroads Predecessors of the Pere Marquette Railway 1866 establishments in Michigan