The pioneers who had started out from Detroit in 1832–1834 to found Chicago and the other towns beyond, had to go in primitive fashion by mail-coach, by flatboats with Indian guides, by schooner, or whatever conveyance they could get for any part of the way. For the traveller of 1840 there were three regular and established routes by any one of which he would be reasonably comfortable. One was by steamer through the lakes, but this he more commonly took on his return trip. A second was by railroad to Ypsilanti, thirty-three miles away, from which a regular line of stages ran to St. Joseph on Lake Michigan, one hundred and seventy miles across the state, and thence by steamer the remaining ninety-two miles to Chicago. The stages travelled along the government road (about twenty miles north of the present boundary of the state) and found the whole way lined with tiny hamlets and cleared farms in the midst of dense forests. The most common route lay just south of this with Toledo as a starting-point. The traveller would take the steamer down the Detroit River and along the western end of the lake and go up the Maumee River nine miles to Toledo, a town of three or four thousand people, destined, said the guide-book, to be a place of much importance. As by the other route, he could go thirty-three miles by railroad, this time to Adrian, which was as far as the road had been built, and thence across the state through the newly occupied country to Michigan City, Indiana, which was then the “commercial depot” for the entire northern part of that state. This town was soon to be benefited by a branch from Fort Wayne of the Wabash and Erie Canal, which was then in progress and was to find its outlet at Toledo. This route left only a trip of fifty-five miles by water to Chicago.