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Toledo Port Clinton & Lakeside Railway by George Hilton Soft Cover 1964
The Toledo Port Clinton & Lakeside Railway by George W. Hilton
Bulletin #42 Electric RY Historical Society
SOFTBOUND
59 pages
Copyright 1964
This fascinating book tells the complete story of the line as told by Hilton, including construction of the railway in the days of interurban fever, details about the boats that carried passengers from Marblehead to Cedar Point and Sandusky, the line's varied rolling stock, accidents and more.
The Marblehead peninsula of Ohio was looked upon by interurban promoters as a rich plum. It was a major vacation and recreation area, dotted with summer cottages and resort hotels. The Ohio Methodist Conference maintained an encampment at Lakeside which attracted summer visitors by the thousands. About 75,000 to 100,000 people per year attended meetings at the encampment or took vacations in and about Lakeside. The peninsula was the jumping-off point for the Lake Erie Islands, which also had a large summer business, and across Sandusky Bay was Cedar Point, yet another major summer resort. Port Clinton, the peninsula's largest town, had a permanent population of only 3007 (1910), but Sandusky, on the south shore of the Bay, was a city of 19,989.
In addition, agriculture in the area was mainly devoted to growing fruit, a high rate commodity that the interurbans had little difficulty attracting away from the railroads. Interurban freight service was fast enough that fruit could be shipped short distances without refrigeration at a saving over the rail rates. Port Clinton shipped about $750,000 worth of peaches and grapes per year, and tomatoes were grown throughout the area.
Finally, the marshy lands west of Port Clinton along the Portage River attracted large numbers of duck hunters every fall. Railroad transportation to the peninsula was no more than adequate. Port Clinton was on the main line of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern (New York Central), but the eastern part of the peninsula was reached only by a short line, the Lakeside & Marblehead Railroad, which operated steam trains and, later, gasoline cars, from a connection with the LS&MS at Danbury.
There were projects to tap the Marblehead Peninsula from the middle 1890's. The Lakeside Association in 1895 proposed to build an interurban from the Lakeside Encampment through Port Clinton to Fremont and Tiffin Since there was no direct rail service from Port Clinton to any of the several large towns south of the Bay, the route to Tiffin and Fremont was particularly attractive. Because of the depressed business conditions in the middle 1890's, the Association was unable to promote its interurban.
Business conditions began to improve about 1897, and by 1900 America was extremely prosperous. The money market was easy and the reported success of several interurbans in Ohio and Michigan owned by H. A. Everett and E. W. Moore of Cleveland had created a veritable mania of promoting interurban lines. Roads were projected to every part of Ohio, frequently several times over. The proposed Tiffin-Fremont-Port Clinton interurban was revived by no less than three separate promoters, each of whom was reported to be grading a route north from Tiffin in 1901. Judge J. F. Bunn of Tiffin graded a roadbed between Tiffin and Fremont under the name of the Toledo Tiffin & Sandusky Railway, and the Kerlin Brothers of Toledo graded from Fremont to Port Clinton with their Tiffin & Port Clinton Railway. The Kerlins went as far as bringing ties and line poles to the property in 1902, but neither company laid track, nor did any of their later rivals.
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