Lake Erie became in the nineteenth century the portal of the Great Lakes. To her shores came from the east an army of immigrants pouring into the states beyond, and from these regions, as they became populated, came back an immense volume of produce to be carried to the cities of the east and the south. These conditions led the citizens of the lake shore promptly to adopt any new means of transportation. In its day they had welcomed the turnpike and built many roads into the interior. During the era of canal-building the people of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on artificial waterways. In 1840 five canals over a thousand miles in length, not including their many branches, opened into Lake Erie. The Welland Canal united it with Lake Ontario, the Erie with the Hudson, while the Ohio and Erie connected Cleveland with Columbus and the Ohio and also with the Pennsylvania Canal and thus with Pittsburg; and from Toledo and the Maumee River the Miami Canal went south to Cincinnati, and the Wabash and Erie west to Lafayette, Indiana. This remarkable group of canals had been built in twenty years. No less wonderful was the building of railroad lines in the next two decades; and to us who are accustomed to limited trains and “flyers” the story of the first trains is one of curious interest. [Illustration: Map: “By Canal and Railroad to Lake Erie” showing connecting canal and railroad paths from Lake Michigan in the west to Lake Ontario and New York in the east] Ohio and Michigan were progressive in the matter of building railroads. Michigan gave a charter to the Michigan Central in 1830, and in 1832, when there were only two hundred and twenty-nine miles of railroad in operation in the United States, the Ohio legislature granted a charter for the construction of a road from Sandusky to Dayton, a distance of over one hundred and fifty miles. These early dates are rather an exhibition of good intentions and foresight than a measure of actual achievement, for neither road was begun until 1837 and then each was carried but a few miles. All railroad-building about the lakes until nearly the middle of the century was a matter of crude and small beginnings, but it is these very beginnings which make us realize the transformations that have taken place within less than eighty years.