Clinton Township started a canal meant to cross Michigan

Before railroads crossed Michigan, promoters imagined boats doing the job. The Clinton River Navigation Company formed in 1827 with a huge plan. It would start near Frederick in today’s Clinton Township and improve the Clinton River. Then crews would dig west to the Kalamazoo River and Lake Michigan.

The Erie Canal was the model. Michigan set aside 500,000 acres to help pay for locks and construction. Work stopped and restarted as money ran short. By 1850, the project was over for good. Railroads were proving faster and easier to build.

The cross-state waterway never arrived. Still, the plan says something about early Clinton Township. For a moment, this river village expected to become the eastern door of a canal across the Lower Peninsula.

Frederick did not become the transportation center its promoters imagined. The unfinished canal is now easy to lose among later roads and neighborhoods. Still, it explains why early maps can sound more grand than the land looks today. Read the river as a proposed route, not a completed one. The canal belongs to the short period between Michigan’s waterway plans and the railroads that replaced them.