It was during the decades of 1820-1840 that the tide of emigration from East to West reached its height. It began in 1825, on the completion of the Erie Canal, and was greatly increased by the larger number of steamboats on the Lakes that immediately followed. The opening in 1854 of the first railroad from the East to the West, the Great Western of Canada, made it possible to go still faster and with greater ease, and during the whole period Detroit gained largely in population. The introduction of street-cars in 1863 afforded opportunity for easy access to outlying regions, and since then the city limits have been several times extended, until now they embrace an area of not far from thirty square miles, with a river frontage of seven miles. Contemporaneously with the rush of settlers to the State and city between 1830 and 1840, came what is known as the "flush times of 1837." Emigration to the West had become almost a stampede, both steam and sail vessels were crowded to their utmost, and knowing the dearness of Eastern lands and the cheapness at which Western lands could be purchased, nearly every person came prepared to buy and did buy lands for settlement or speculation. So great was the rush that all careful preliminaries were dispensed with, and if only a title could be shown, anything that "lay outdoors" could be disposed of. Town sites were a favorite form of investment, and the supply kept pace with the demand. Surveyors and draftsmen were soon busy day and night representing imaginary cities on paper. On these plans, literally like "Jonah's gourd," there sprang up in a night, stores, dwellings and court-houses, indeed, all the appurtenances of an old established town. The era of "wildcat" banks had just begun and the principal security of their bills was the land covered by these imaginary towns. Theoretically, twenty per cent. of the bills issued by the too easily organized banks were to be secured by specie deposits. Actually, not five per cent. was so deposited. The same coin--in some cases in the same boxes--was exhibited by a score of different banks, and in some instances "coin boxes" were filled with iron and other substitutes for specie. These frauds were winked at by bank commissioners, who should have inspected the contents of the boxes. There was thus a trinity of imaginings,--imaginary towns, imaginary banks and imaginary inspection. When the bubbles burst there were left in some places towns and houses without a single inhabitant, and certain of these houses contained room after room in which the walls were literally papered with bank bills in sheets that had never been cut apart or signed.