Before the invention of the automobile city dwellers used street cars that were at first pulled by horses. Later the streetcars were powered by steam engines or electricity to get from one place to another within the city limits.
When I was a young boy I remember hearing stories of an older Borculo generation who told of their experiences riding the Interurban. My question at that time was what was the Interurban they were talking about. I discovered they were talking about an electric powered railroad that traveled between Grand Rapids and Holland Michigan.
Most Borculo folks would board this train at the Zeeland Depot.
The train cars had electric motors that were powered by 600 volts of direct current delivered to the cars engines by an overhead wire or line that was located above the cars as they moved down the tracks. This Interurban was called the Grand Rapids Holland and Lake Michigan Railway. It was a clean and quiet electric power train that traveled east and west through the urban areas west of Grand Rapids to Holland and the resort hotels located on the shores of Lake Macatawa and Ottawa Beach at Lake Michigan at this time.
This railroad began in 1901 when there were only a few autos in use in the Grand Rapids and Holland area. It operated for 25 years until 1926. By this date Henry Ford had built 15 million Model T Fords. This competition from the auto which allowed people to come and go at will caused the Interurban Railway to go bankrupt on November 15th, 1926.
The president of the Interurban Ben Hanchett was a wealthy Grand Rapids businessman who had been involved with some of the early Grand Rapids streetcar companies. He was related to the Jenison family who had settled in Jenison Michigan in 1835. This family owned large tracts of land, sawmills, farms, and other businesses in the area.
In the early 1900s many Americans were becoming prosperous and spending more time and money on pleasure and recreation. Riding a train to the resorts on Lake Michigan beaches was one of those pleasures. Who were these people who rode the Interurban between the years 1901 to 1926? First there were many wealthy Grand Rapids folks who wanted to enjoy the beaches of Lake Michigan and the newly erected hotels and resorts that had been built on the shores of Lake Macatawa. Other families from the area also gathered at the beaches for picnics and family reunions and to enjoy the sandy beaches or even go fishing.
The Jenison Brothers, Lucas and Lumen, had built one of the first resort hotels there. The railway, in order to boost the business, built an amusement park there. It was called the Jenison Electric Park. It was located on the South side of the channel across from Ottawa Beach. The rides included a wooden roller coaster, a large Ferris wheel, and other amusement rides. This area was becoming a miniature version of Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky Ohio. The electricity from the railway's power houses also supplied the power for the electric park rides.
The railway also promoted special events which brought in thousands of visitors living along the route to visit Lake Michigan and the Electric Park. There were also many visitors from Chicago who took a ship to Holland. The channel was now 28 ft deep. The railway sponsored a Farmer's Day event in 1904 which brought in 12,000 visitors to the park. They had a huge ox roast and a free meal for everyone attending.
Some folks used the Interurban to get to work each day. People who worked in Holland at H. J. Heinz, the furniture factories, or the sugar beet factory used the railway. Some students used it to get to classes at Zeeland High School or college. Seminary students used it to get to preaching assignments on Sunday. the Borculo Christian Reformed Church would have Seminary students from Calvin Seminary in Grand Rapids come out to preach to them at different times. My father, Martin Essenburg, told me the story of his father Roelof Essenburg who had a cousin Benjamin Essenburg, who was a Seminary Student in the 1920s at Calvin Seminary. One Sunday he was asked to preach at the Borculo church. Living in Grand Rapids and not having a auto he took the Interurban to Zeeland where my grandfather picked him up on a Saturday afternoon to spend the weekend at my grandfather's farm one mile south of Borculo. He preached two sermons on Sunday. My grandfather brought him back to the Zeeland Interurban Depot early on Monday so he could get back to classes that day.
My father and some of his friends would board the Interurban in Zeeland to visit the Jenison Electric Park. They liked to ride on the wooden roller coaster “The Figure 8”. One time while riding a crowded Interurban car my uncle had his coin purse taken from his pocket by a pickpocket. So there were also some less desirable people who rode the cars who would steal from the passengers.
The Interurban railroad tracks were much lighter in weight than those laid for the large freight trains that used steam-powered locomotives that carried the heavy freight of that era. They were also much cheaper to build. The Interurban had a double track of rails going in both directions. It had a number of train depots along the road from Grand Rapids to Holland. Going west from Grand Rapids they were located at Grandville, Jenison, Hanley or Shack Huddle, Jamestown, Forest Grove, Vriesland, Zeeland, Holland, and Macatawa. See the schedule of 1902.
Train cars left each depot every hour. There were four power houses that generated the electricity from Grand Rapids to Holland.
There were a lot of people living along the road who used the train each day to get to work in Grand Rapids and Holland. My mother-in-law lived on a farm in Jamestown. She had two sisters who boarded the train at Shack Huddle station each morning to work at the Hekman Biscuit Company in Grand Rapids. A neighbor got on the same car each morning to go to his job at the Pere Marquette Railroad in Grand Rapids. When the Interurban closed in 1926 he was forced to buy an auto. He complained about the high car payments he had to make after that.
The Interurban also carried some freight Sugar beets were brought to the Holland Sugar Beet Factory from farms located along the route. The creameries in Jamestown, Borculo, and Beaverdam would ship tubs of fresh butter packed in ice that would find its way to grocery stores in the larger cities of the area. Blocks of ice were brought to creameries from Lake Macatawa in the winter for cooling the butter in the summer months. Celery farmers in Hudsonville would load fresh celery and bring it to the Forest Grove Depot where it was then taken to Holland and transferred to a ship at Lake Macatawa which then took it directly to Chicago.
When World War 1 ended with Germany on November 18th 1918, this brigade in northern Russia did not hear about it until months later. There was no immediate effort for returning the unit home, so it was not until July 17, 1919 that Henry Garvelink and his 42 buddies fro the Holland area arrived back home from the service, long after the other soldiers had gone home.
For their homecoming the city of Holland chartered a special car on the Interurban train to carry them home on the final leg of their journey from Grand Rapids to Holland. It was decorated with colorful flags, banners, and a sign which read, “Welcome Home Holland Polar Bears.”
Later this group of men in Holland and also in Detroit organized groups that met together regularly for years to come to preserve their comradeship and perpetuate the WWI Polar Bear Expedition experience, including Henry Garvelink.
A few years after the war ended another change took place in our country. In 1919 our country adopted the Eighteenth Amendment and our country went dry for 14 years. It prohibited the sale of alcoholic beverages to the public. One exception was for making home-brew for personal use, but not to sell. If you got caught selling home-brew you would get your name on the front page of the local newspaper.
After World War I we entered a period called the Roaring 20's. It was a period of rising prosperity and people were spending more time and money on pleasures and possessions.
Farmers were buying more modern farm machinery. My grandfather bought his first tractor, a 1919 Fordson.
Housewives were getting more modern furniture and appliances, better clothes, pump organs, phonographs, and radios. A few even got indoor plumbing and electricity.
Unfortunately the Roaring 20's didn't last and the Interurban Era came to an end in 1926 In 1929 our country headed into its worst depression.