Beyond Shingle Diggin's

Published May 10, 1995

When Mr. Tim Hoeffner of the Michigan Department of Transportation challenged local communities along Amtrak to do something themselves to keep it going along the Grand Rapids-Chicago route, I think of how hard our forebears worked to get the railroad through here in the days when they so desperately needed it. Imagine the celebration when that first train came through in 1871. It consisted of a steam locomotive with a flat car gaily decorated with evergreen branches and flags and a few executives of the Chicago and West Michigan line. The big stop that day was at the Coloma station, where people came from miles around in wagons, buggies, and on foot.

July 4th was the big day and Mrs. Grace Black Shoup (Emily’s mother), in an interview with my mother, Mabel Branch Stark, some 40 years ago, told about the night before that eventful day. The railroad tracks were going through their farm and while railroad men worked all night to finish the track, her father, N. Jared Black, worked all night putting in timbers and braces to complete a cattle run beneath the tracks so that the train could get to town and the cattle could cross safely underneath.

If you had arrived by stagecoach you would have had to “walk a good piece” through muddy paths from the stagecoach stop at the Osgood Hotel clear at the other end of town (where Tastee Freez is now), still being run by the Gilson Osgood family in 1871. Well, you might have hired a carriage from their livery stable next door.

Of course, after the train came and S.L. Vincent took over as proprietor, he might have given you a ride in the “Buss” he advertised. He offered to meet all trains and give his customers a free ride to the Hotel.

Some enterprising citizens, including promoters from out of town, like others along the projected rail lines, had speculated on the railway but things didn’t work out as they hoped. Their disappointment concerned the expectations of a shift in the town’s location.

“Of course,” they thought, “the railroad station would now be the center of business activity.”

The main streets of Dickerville (by now Coloma) had been South Paw Paw along Tannery Creek, where several mills were located and the steamboat from the Paw Paw River made a stop and around the comer on St. Joseph Street (now Red Arrow Highway) where the stagecoach stopped. It was logical that wherever the railroad located would be the center. There was a cornfield where Coloma’s present main street is and a potato patch where Baker Park now is. So these promoters chose Washington Street as the best guess. To insure their foresight, they bought a large tract of land in the northwest corner of the settlement, platted it and offered free right of way and land for the depot, which Chicago-West Michigan accepted. This put the depot down beyond the Army Surplus Store toward the Berrien County Fruit Exchange.

Now many Coloma citizens were persuaded to start or move, their businesses into this new town which they (the out-of-town promoters) called Ebberfield. And quite a few did locate there. Minot Ingraham from out north of town built the St. Cloud Hotel right across from that first depot, a combination hotel, store and dance hall. Others followed suit, including The DeField and Porter Tin Shop, Pete Muth Saloon, William Bee Drug Store and S.W. Hamilton Grocery. Some lots sold as “great investments” proved worthless.

Why this area never “took off” is one of those mysteries which we often see in land development. The town did grow closer to the railroad but from the other direction. Eventually, the depot was moved closer to Paw Paw Street and most of the other businesses were moved too, except for the White Cloud Hotel which provided competition for the Osgood Hotel, known soon after as the Teeter House. No wonder S.L. Vincent offered free rides to his customers who came by train!

By 1885, something was happening at “The Lake” (not named Paw Paw until 1892), which presented new needs, and Dr. W.A. Baker realized it and began promoting the idea of a spur from this train on out to Paw Paw Lake to accommodate tourists who were finding their way into town by rail but had to hire a carriage, or Billy Ellis’s dray, or walk with bag and baggage. Finally, through his efforts, and a group who agreed, a standard gauge track was built down Paw Paw Street over the bridge and up the hill to the lake; and June 4, 1896, a train made from a threshing outfit and old street cars, with John Umphrey at the throttle of the Mickelson

Shepherd traction engine, carried its first passengers. It only went ten miles an hour and resorters loved to outdistance it or ride on the cowcatcher at the front, but it carried 15,000 passengers its first season.