The many roads opened by the commissioners of the townships of Flint, Flushing, Munday, Grand Blanc and other townships had by the middle of the century so covered the county with roads that their activity in that line ceased to a considerable extent, and thereafter we find them giving their attention to the improvement of roads already laid out and to correcting the descriptions, etc.

On January 8, 1851, supervisor A. T. Davis, of Flint township, acting with James Carter and Ira Stannard, commissioners of highways, granted to the president and directors of the Genesee County Plank Road Company the right of way to use, for the purposes of planking the same, the Saginaw road so called, from Flint to the north line of Grand Blanc township. This action was cancelled by the same officers the same day and renewed by a more formal and accurately described road, immediately after such cancellation.

Thomas B. Begole appears on the records as one of the commissioners of highways, for Flint, in the year of 1851.

We find about this time, alterations of the earlier roads, many of which were laid out by metes and courses, to conform to the topographical conditions of the lands traversed; also changes to make the roads conform to the sections lines. Among the activities of commissioners Begole and Carter, in the last of 1851, were laying out a mile of road north from the Davison road, through the middle of section 3, now a part of our good roads system; the survey of a section of the road to the home of "Alonzo Torrey." St. John street was surveyed and recorded from a place near the "steam m ill lot" to the Genesee town line. A section of the Calkins road west from the present city was another of their road creations. The "Northern wagon road" was altered by them. In conjunction with C. Cartwright and Nicholas Hosmer, of Davison, which had now been set off from Lapeer county and into Genesee, they had laid out the township line road between Davison township and Flint, now part of the Vassar road.

In 1852 we have the name of Grand Decker as commissioners of highways of Flint township, he who was the first mayor of the city of Flint. In that year they laid out a small part of the Jennings road north from the 'reservation." This was accomplished in conjunction with commissioners of highways of Flushing, Arthur C. Andrews and Truman Herrick. The most important part of their official activity was the paying out of court street east from East street, and the record of this act may be found on page 167 of the book of road Records of Flint township.

In 1853 the additional commissioner was W. J. Cronk and the board at that time arrived at the dignified position of having a clerk in the person of G. W. Hood. During that year they opened several roads, and among them one, in conjunction with the Flushing commissioners, along the line between the town townships, now part of the Potter road.

Court street was opened from a point near the small bridge eastward to a road "known and designated as the railroad." A part of Stockdale street was opened this year and a rather indefinite road near that extending eastward. In December they laid out the Dye road from Maple avenue north to the Miller road. It appears that the latter road has acquired the name Miller road as early as 1853.

In 1854 the commissioners had little in road opening to do, and the founding of the city of Flint in 1855 took away from them a great part of their responsibility, the transfer of the city's streets from them to the city authorities confining them to the country roads. The rather anomalous conditions that had existed when the growing population of the present city's limits had made a center of population that warranted the formation of a city government out of the township government had placed a great burden of responsibility upon the township's officials, and it is to their credit that they did so well meet their arduous tasks and so well solved the matter of road making, upon which so much depended in the development of the county.

A little before 1850 a new experiment in road making was tried in Genesee county, in common with the rest of the state. It consisted in covering a proposed route with a layer of wood, generally in the form of plank, from two to four inches thick, laid upon timbers placed lengthwise upon a graded roadbed. In the absence of railways these "plank-roads' answered a most excellent purpose. This was particularly so in those parts of Genesee where the sandy character of the land made obtaining a solid roadbed doubtful. Large corporations, heavily capitalized, wee created by state legislation to exploit plank-roads in various parts of the state. In 1847 was organized the first company whose proposed route lay across any part of Genesee--the "Pontiac and Corunna Plank-road Company." It was authorized to construct a plank-road from Pontiac to Corunna, via Byron, in Shiawassee county, which would pass through the southwestern corner of Genesee; for some reason the road was not built.

During the decade of 1848 to 1858 several of these companies were chartered for parties in Genesee county, and some of them built roads. Among them were the Genesee County Plank-Road Company, the Flint and Fentonville Plank-Road Company, the Saginaw and Genesee Plank-Road Company, and the Oakland and Genesee Plank-Road Company. They first proposed to build a road from Flint to the south line of the township of Grand Blanc, on the Saginaw road. The plans of this company came to naught, though in 1854 Flint was connected through Grand Blanc with Holly on the Detroit & Milwaukee railroad; as early as 1858 more than fifteen thousand passengers a year were carried over it; its practical usefulness ended in 1864 with the opening of the Flint & Holly railroad. The second of the companies named proposed a road from Flint to Fentonville. This road was finally completed and proved very useful. Its charter was repealed in 1871 and no toll was taken after 1872. A fine graveled road has taken its place. The proposed road from Flint to the Saginaw river was also completed in 1852. This was of great benefit and was largely used until the opening of the Flint & Pere Marquette railroad, from Flint to East Saginaw. The company last named was unsuccessful. Their purpose was to connect Flint with Pontiac by way of Grand Blanc and Atlas townships. Notwithstanding the "plank road fever" was at its height, the road was never built.

In 1909 the board of supervisors adopted the county good road system and appointed the three members of the county good roads commission. At that time, no roads in the county could be classified as good roads, except some small isolated stretches. The standing of the county as one of the great auto manufacturing centers of the world made this condition seem quite inconsistent, and the people of the county, realizing this, voted four hundred thousand dollars for road improvements. It has been the policy of the commissioners to construct the main traveled roads and unite these into a system to meet the requirements of the county as a whole. Several trunk lines have been constructed across the county; one hundred and ninety miles have been built and six miles were, in July, 1916, under construction. In the graves of the glacial deposits have been found fine materials for road construction, and thus the ice age is doing an economic benefit to the people in Genesee county today. The Miller road to Swartz creek, the Flushing road, the old State road to Fenton, the old Saginaw turnpike from Grand Blanc to Pine Run, the Lapeer road, and the Corunna road, are among the best improved and most traveled of the new roads. This good work of the good-roads commissioners meets the hearty approval and co-operation of the people of the county. The members of the commission are at the present time Lynus Wolcott, Fred R. Ottaway and Wilbur Becker. In the fall of 1916 the board of supervisors took preliminary steps toward presenting to the people of the county a one-million-dollar bond issue for good roads.

The activity of road-making throughout the county has been equaled only by the road improvement within the city. the commencement of 1916 found Flint with twenty-four and one-half miles of paved streets, and the present season will add ten miles. The expenditure of 1916 within the city for pavement and sewers will approximate half a million dollars. This furnishes a fitting sequel to the subscription of one hundred dollars raised in 1831, and the cutting out of the brush and trees from the old trail between Flint and the Cass river, in November of that year, by John Todd, Phinneas Thompson and Albert Miller.

Graveled turnpikes have taken the place of the shirt-lived plank-roads. Gravel beds are abundant in Genesee, and conventionally distributed. At time these road have been constructed by corporations, which have kept them in good condition and charged a nominal toll for all vehicles passing over them; at other times, they have been kept in repair by the various townships. The automobile has worked a marvelous transformation in the condition of roads in the county, and the "good roads" movement has placed Genesee among the first counties in the state for the number and quality of her public roadways.

The common public conveyance over the early roads from Genesee county to the rest of the world was the stage-coach. A reminiscence of this vehicle, given by a well-known newspaperman of other days, is as follows:

The old stage-coach was the fastest and best public conveyance by land forty-five years ago. Its route was along the main post-roads, and, although a third of a century has elapsed since steam was harnessed to the flying car and the whistle of the locomotive usurped the place of the echoing stage-horn that heralded the coming of the "four-wheeled wonder," bearing the mail with the traveling public and their baggage, yet along the byways and more secluded portions of our county the old stage-coach, the venerated relic of our past, is till the speediest mode of travel and the stage-horn yet gives notice of its approach.

As one makes a pilgrimage, in imagination, along the old stage-route, the spirit of the past seems to start into charm, bringing back the old associations, "withdrawn afar" and mellowed by the light of other days.

Reader, you can fancy this ancient vehicle--a black-painted and deck-roofed hulk-- starting out from Detroit with its load of passengers swinging on its thorough-braces attached tot he fore and hind axle, and crowded to its fullest capacity. There was a boot projecting three or four feet behind for luggage; an iron railing ran around the top of the coach, where extra baggage or passengers were stowed, as occasion required. The driver occupied a high seat in front; under his feet was a place for his traps and the mail; on each side of his seat was a lamp firmly fixed, to light his way by night; inside the coach were three seats, which would accommodate nine passengers. You can imagine the stage-coach, thus loaded, starting out at the 'get-ape' of the driver, as he cracks his whip over the heads of his leaders, when all four horses spring to their work and away goes the lumbering vehicle, soon lost to sight in the woods, struggling along the old Saginaw road .lurching from side to side into deep ruts and often into deeper mudholes.

For bringing people to a common level, and making them acquainted with each other and tolerant of each other's opinions, give me the old stage-coach on the old pioneer road. You can ride all days by the side of a man in a railway car and he will not deign to speak to you. But in the old coach, silence found a tongue, and unsociability a voice' common wants made them companions and common hardships made them friends.

Probably this was the only place where the Democrat and the old-line Whig ever were in quiet juxtaposition with that acrid, angular, intensely earnest and cordially hated man called the Abolitionist. Spurned and :tabooed" as an agitator, fanatic and disturber of the public peace by both the old parties, his presence was as much shunned and despised as were his political principles. But this man thus hated was found "cheek by jowl" with Democrats and Whig in the old stage. Who shall say that these old politicians, sitting face to face with a common enemy, and compelled to listen to "Abolition doctrine," were not benefited by it? Perhaps this was the leaven cast into the Democracy and Whiggery of the past that finally leaven the whole lump.

When the roads were very bad the "mud-wagons," on thorough-braces, drawn by two span of horses was substituted for the regular coach. The verb trot was obsolete at such times, but the verb spatter was conjugated through all its moods and tenses. The wagon, the horses, the driver, and the passengers could testify to this, for they were often literally covered with "free soil." The driver, sitting high up on the front, was monarch of the road. Everything that could, must get out of his way. If there was any opposition, he had only to slap his hand on the mail-bag, and say, "Uncle Sam don't want this little satchel detained." And thus on they go. The driver, as he nears a tavern, post office by the roadside, or village, whips out the tinhorn from its sheath at his side and send forth a succession of pealing notes that wake the slumbering echoes, which reverberate and die away in the distant arcades of the forest. The tavern or village catching the first note of the horn is immediately awake. All are on the qui vive to witness the "coming in" of the stage with its load of passengers, and to hear the news from the outer world contained in the old padlocked leather mailbag.

The stage-coach of forty-five years ago was an important institution. Its coming was always an interesting event. It had all the enchantment about it that distance lends. The settlement or village hailed its advent as a ship returning from a long cruise, bringing relatives, friends and news from a foreign land. It linked the woodland villages with each other, and kept them all in communication with the outside world. But those little four-nooked missives, coming from long distances, whether billet-doux or business notes, had each a postal charge of one-quarter of a dollar. Correspondence cost something in those days.

The stage-coach, so familiar to the first generation of the present century, was familiarly known as the "Concord coach;" and this no doubt originated from the fact that the original pattern was built in Concord, new Hampshire, which, in fact, is the habitat of this kind of vehicle, and the manufacture is carried on there to the present time.

The common style of coach cost probably from two hundred to three hundred dollars, and has as many kinds of running and standing rigging as a rebel wagon of an average lake schooner. On a rough road the middle seat was preferable, because, being placed "amidship," the motion was a minimum one, while the forward, and particularly the rear, seats swung up and down like the bow and stern of a seagoing ship in a heavy sea "bows on." On a smooth road the "back seat" was the ne plus ultra of comfort and the first passengers were sure to secure it. With a coach full of jolly passengers in pleasant weather, and curtains close drawn, it was really a luxurious mode of traveling, only excelled on land by the "palace car" of after-days.

As early as 1833, Joshua Terry had a contract for carrying the mails over the route between Pontiac and Saginaw. His trips were made weekly and he has limited accommodations for passengers. Upon the establishment of the land office and post office at Flint River village, William Clifford ran a line of stages to Pontiac. This line was continued under various managements until the completion of a through route by railway. In an early number of the Whig we find the following advertisement of Messrs. Pettee and Boss, stage proprietors:

CHEAP AND RAPID RIDING.

The stage for Pontiac leaves Flint each morning (Sundays excepted), stopping at Grand Blanc, Stony Run, Groveland, Springfield, Clarkston, Austin and Waterford, and arrives at Pontiac in time to enable passengers to take the cars the same day for

Detroit.

E. N. PETTEE
A. J. Boss
Proprietors

Flint, March 23, 1850.

Mr. M. S. Elmore has written the following interesting reminiscence of the old Flint stage lines:

Four or five-surely no more than half dozen--merchants of earlier Flint remain to talk over experiences, when their goods and wares were :hauled' on wagons from the stations on the D. & M. railway at Pontiac, Fentonville, or Holly--James Decker, William Stevenson, Jerome Eddy, Robert Ford, W. H. Hammersley. M. S. Elmore., el at. Please note, I do not say earliest Flint, or, shades of Cotharin, or O'Donoughue, Grant Decker, Fox, Cummings, the Henderson, or Deweys might protest my little list were too recent. Sam Alpin, Charles Selleck and John Atchison were the responsible teamsters by whom all freight of whatever sort was transported from the D. & M. R. R. to Flint, each making mot more than one trip per day over the uneven plank roads, through all seasons and in every kind of weather. The combined loads of these three teams would not have filled the smallest modern freight car on the F. & P. M. travel over the same routes on Boss & Burrell's line of stages was regarded good evidence of progress and the plank road to Saginaw an important fact in facilitating travel and traffic, in the year of the advent of the writer to the city--1858--more than fifteen thousand passengers having been transported over this line of stages. One recalls the anticipated arrival and departures of stages--two, three, and sometimes six--at the old "Carleton," on fair days or four. And right here I will take the liberty of quoting from an interesting letter to the writer, from a former Flint boy, J. Earl Howard, assistant treasurer of the P. M. Company and of the C., H. & D. Railroad Company office at Cincinnati. Referring to this stage line, Mr. Howard says: "What a stir they used to make in the usually quiet town when they came in from Holly and Fenton. More noise and bustle around the old 'Carleton' than there has been since with the new 'Bryant.' W. W. Barnes was the stage and express agent, and subsequently the railroad agent when the line was opened to Saginaw, and the depot was located about McFarlan's Mill, afterward joint freight agent of the F. & P. M. and Flint and Holly roads. Afterward the depot building was removed to the juncture of these two roads, on the river bank opposite the present passenger station of the P. M. The old freight building is yet doing duty in the railroad yards, on Kearsley street."

The oldest highway in Genesee county is the Flint river, which is mentioned in the provisions of the Ordinance of 1787 admitting the Northwest Territory. By that ordinance it was provided that the waters of all the streams that found outlet of their waters through the St. Lawrence, and which were susceptible of navigation by boats or batteau, should be free for the use of the people forever. The Flint river has been held by the courts to be one of the streams that come within this provision, and hence we may say that this river is the oldest legal highway in our country. Even before this provision of 1787, the river was used for the canoes of the Indians and batteau of the French traders who trafficked among the Indians for this furs. The Indians had many villages, small hamlets, along the banks of the streams of the Saginaw valley and to these the traders resorted; the river was the logical highway for coming and going among these villages. Mus-cat-a-wing, a Chippewa village on the site of the fifth ward of Flint, and Kishkawbee, another village of the same people, located on the bank of the river about a mile above Geneseeville, were two of these. On this waterway the most important place was the Grand Traverse, the point where the old trail from Saginaw to Detroit crossed the river, then the Pewanigo-win-see-be, or river of the Flints. The point was destined to develop into the city of Flint. If we were to go back into geological history, we would find a time when a great lake spread out over a great part of the county, covering half the present towns. Its waters, overflowing finally, by erosion of the glacial drift, found an outlet through the great moraine deposit which had dammed its floods. It drained these waters until the lake became a series of swamps; then a drainage channel, developing through these swamps, gradually grew into a river, and, sinking deeper into the till of the pleistocene over which it flowed, drained the swamps and became the highway for the canoes of the natives, just as the moraine where the lake found its outlet formed the line of least resistance to their travel overland. So the two routes, one by water and one by land, crossed where Flint now stands. It was not chance, but the slow evolution of natural forces, working through the ages, that ordained the building of our city where it now is.

The navigability of our river, in common with the others of the Saginaw valley, was firmly believed in by the earliest settlers. Canal utility in the development of a country was firmly fixed in the common thought. The Erie canal was the great example. The guide books used by emigrants from the East advised them to take the Erie canal to Buffalo and the steamboat from there to Detroit. Many had come here by that route.

In 1839, Gardiner D. Williams, Ephraim S. Williams Perry G. Gardner, James Frazier, Norman Little, W. L. P. Little, Thomas J. Drake, Benjamin Pearson, Robert F. Stage, Wait Beach, Charles G. Hascall and T. L. Brent were authorized by the Legislature to open books for the stock of the "Genesee and Saginaw Navigation Company," which was thereby incorporated. This corporation was authorized to enter upon the Flint river and lands of either side; to use such materials as it required to erect its dams, locks, tow path, etc.--in fine, to do anything proper to canalize the river from Flint village to a point in section 35 or 36, town 11, range 4 east, near the city of Saginaw. Not only did the ambition of this company contemplate the navigation of the river from Flint to Saginaw, but it proposed to connect the Cass river by the most direct and eligible route.

So certain was the navigability of the river fixed in the minds of the Legislature even, that when, in 1835, the legislature council of the territory gave to Rufus W. Stevens, of Grand Blanc, and James McCormick the authority to build the dam in the Flint river :at or near where the Saginaw turnpike crosses the river," it was expressly provided that they should make and maintain a lock for the passage of water craft, ninety feet long and sixteen wide, and from slack water below the dam to slack water of sufficient depth above the dam for the protection of the navigation rights of the users of the river.

The navigation company apparently did not succeed in its promotion plans, for in 1844, by an act entitled "an act to improve the navigation of the Flint river," there was appropriated out of the land of the state for internal improvements a tract of five thousand acres "for the purpose of clearing the flood wood from, and otherwise improving the navigation of, the Flint river from the village of Flint to the Saginaw river." the improvement contemplated by this act was left to the commissioner of internal improvements, who might dig a canal around the obstructions in case it seemed to him the latter way to accomplish the desired ends.

In 1846 a new corporation was organized, "The Genesee and Saginaw Navigation company," with Chancy S. Paine, George M. Dewey, Eugene Van Deventer, James Frazer, Henry M. Henderson, Porter Hazelton, Ezekiel R. Ewing, James B. Walker, Joseph K. Rugg, Elijah N. Davenport, Nelson Smith and William McDonald as incorporators. This company had the same powers as the former company, but their limits were from Flint to the mouth of the Shiawassee river. Similar organized efforts were made about this time to navigate the Shiawassee and the Cass.

The company was, by an act of the Legislature of 1850, authorized to make the charges therein specified for carriage of one thousand pounds per mile, for freight of various classes; flour, salted port and beef, butter, cheese, whiskey and beer, cider, etc., were in the same class. This act was passed on the 2^nd day of April, 1850, and a few days afterwards the scow "Empire," flying the flag of the United States, had left Flint for its maiden trip to Flushing with passengers and a cargo of fright. Some later runs are recorded. But the navigation on the river was not demonstrated to be feasible and, as Mr. Bates in the "Jubilee History of Flint," says, the coming of the plank road solved the transportation question against the waterways and the attention of our road builders was turned into another channel.

The real utility of the river as a water highway began about the year 1846 when the lumbering interest commenced the operations that afterwards became so extensive. When the attention of the builders of our county was directed to the value of the timber along the river above the city, its manufacture into lumber soon became the leading industry. The first uses of the river were of little importance measured by the value of the logs transported, but the larger operations of the years beginning with 1848 made it a matter of vital import to the growing lumber industry. For a generation after 1848 the river was the center of the greatest activity. Rafting was never a part of this transportation, as the distance was not so great as to require rafting of the logs; but the drive, in the earlier period was very important, as was later the booming of logs and transporting of same by the boom company which as organized to meet the greater needs of the growing industry.

The use of the river of log driving ceased about 1878. Since that time the river has been deserted by craft of industry, but its use for pleasure craft has grown to a considerable extent. About the year 1900, "Cap" Foster owned and ran the "Caprice," a steamer of about one-hundred-passenger capacity, on the slack water of the dam above the city of Hitchcock's Grove, a favorite place for picnics. Shortly after that time W. H. Smith came to Flint and he built the "Dawn," a steamer of about the same capacity, and ran it for pleasure parties on the river. He was joined later by his brother, Louis Smith, and together they have navigated the river for pleasure seekers since that time. Their gasoline launch, the "Mego," was a familiar sight along the river for years, and alter the "Genesee" and the "Belle" have carried many thousands. The opening of Owana Park, farther up the river, made a new place of resort and there are now from seventy-five to eight launches on the stretch of river above the dam. The limit of this navigation was the Hitchcock grove for many years, but later improvement has made it possible to run launches five or six miles up the river and in very favorable water conditions some have gone up to Geneseeville.