Reconstructing a History of Industry Along the Detroit Terminal Railroad in Detroit, Michigan

This series of maps is based on historical maps of the Detroit Terminal Railroad from 1956. These maps were obtained from a private entity who collects railroad maps from Michigan. The Detroit Terminal Railroad operated in Detroit from 1905 until 1984 when the company merged with Consolidated Rail Corporation, its parent company (Babbish, 2014).

The purpose of this series of maps is to visualize the magnitude of industry served by the Detroit Terminal Railroad during the peak of industry and manufacturing in Detroit in the 1950s. Today, almost all of the industry served by the railroad in 1956 no longer exists. When conducting a search on the Michigan Secretary of State Business Search website, most of the industries on the historic maps are now dissolved.

The neighborhoods around the Detroit Terminal Railroad have also seen decline over time. Any parcel owned by the Detroit Land Bank on the map is vacant. Some of the parcels still have structures or pieces of structures while many are completely vacant. The deterioration of industry and housing stock are both indicators of greater economic decline in Detroit. It is important to be able to look at where past industry was located to understand the full scope of decline that has happened since the peak of industry and manufacturing. The Detroit Terminal Railroad collapsed because of the deindustrialization that occurred in Detroit from the 1960s into the 1980s (Babbish, 2014).

The image shown below is a combination of two of the historic Detroit Terminal Railroad maps that this analysis is based on. In this map series, there are 29 maps that show all tracks and industries served by the railroad. For the section of maps shown below, there were seven industries served by the railroad in 1956. Out of these seven industries, none of them exist today. On the previous map, five of the seven the lots are presently vacant with no structures. This theme of deindustrialization and vacant land can be seen throughout this series of maps that show locations at different points along the Detroit Terminal Railroad's belt line.

The previous map shows Davison Yard on the northside of Detroit near the City of Highland Park. Davison Yard served as the operational headquarters of the Detroit Terminal Railroad with freight yards, a dispatcher office, engine maintenance facilities, and business offices (Babbish, 2014). Most of the railroad yard is abandoned, but at its peak it had 23 tracks. The only track that still exists runs through the middle of the yard. 

The most prominent feature of this area was the maintenance roundhouse. At its peak, it housed 21 stalls for maintaining railroad locomotives (Babbish, 2014). In 1994, Mound Correctional Facility was built on top of the old roundhouse and maintenance area of the yard. This prison operated on the eastern half of the old Davison Yard from 1994-2012.

On the western half of the old Davison yard, Ryan Correctional Facility was constructed and operated from 1991-2021. This facility was built on top of an old automobile storage facility and a railroad owned spur that connected to multiple industries served by the railroad during its operational years. Both of these sites are listed as environmentally contaminated sites by the State of Michigan, but there are few details available from the City of Detroit or the State of Michigan about the status of the contamination, the contaminants present, or a timeline for remediation.

It is unclear if the environmental contamination was present from railroad activities, industrial activities, or construction of the prisons. There is strong evidence that other industries served by the Detroit Terminal Railroad contaminated the land where they were located, as shown by the environmental contamination and brownfields datasets that list past industries as the initial polluters.

It is interesting to see the shift on this site from industry to prisons especially since it is rare in Michigan for prisons to be located in dense urban areas. This transition might reflect the state's reliance on incarceration to solve social problems.

Both of the prisons are now closed and the future land use in this area is unknown. There are many vacant lots located around this industrial area that do not have a strong possibility for revitalization or redevelopment.

Today, some areas have new industry on the land where historical industries were served by the railroad, but they are smaller industries like warehouse storage and salvage yards. Compared to the coal yards, heavy manufacturing facilities, and distribution facilities that existed in 1956, the current industry is less economically productive. Much of the land is also vacant with no existing structures, overgrown vegetation, and deteriorating sidewalk and road infrastructure. When buildings are still present on the property, they are run down and appear abandoned even when industry is present on that parcel.

On map 3, most of the industrial parcels served by the Detroit Terminal Railroad still have industrial land uses. The uses and owners of the parcels are different today, but many of the parcels are still actively used for industry. This is contrast to the land uses in map 1, where most of the past industrial parcels sit vacant. There are also fewer parcels owned by the Detroit Land Bank Authority and Detroit Building Authority. This indicates that fewer parcels around this industrial area lay vacant, maybe in part because this industrial area remains somewhat active compared to the Davison Yard area that is surrounded by vacant parcels owned by the land bank.

On map 4, what stands out is that a few of the industrial businesses served by the Detroit Terminal Railroad in 1956 were not listed by name on the historical maps. Also, some of the industries have much larger buildings gathered in complexes in comparison to the other areas studied in these maps. Some examples of larger complexes include The Mistele Coal & Coke Company (3), Micro-Matics Hone Corporation (2), and Motor & Machiner Casting Company (1). Many of the sites still host industrial land uses, but it is not as productive as it was.

On map 5, customers of the railroad are located in the Cities of Highland Park and Detroit. There is no parcel data publicly available for Highland Park so it is unclear which parcels are vacant. Many of the parcels that were customers of the railroad in 1956 still have some sort of active industry today. There are a few brownfields and environmentally contaminated sites in this area that do not have in-depth information about contaminants and cleanup timelines.

Overall, several themes that stood out in this project. First, as industry in Detroit moved out of the city through deindustrialization, the Detroit Terminal Railroad declined because local industries were the only clients of this railroad. Second, there is an obvious pattern of increased housing vacancy surrounding the collapsed industrial areas shown in this map series. The most striking example of housing decline was around the old Davison Yard, where most parcels are either owned by the Detroit Land Bank Authority or the Detroit Building Authority. Although there are many reasons for housing vacancy in Detroit, including past race riots and overall patterns of blight, a loss of economic productivity and employment in industrial areas can impact the desirability of housing.

Digitizing railroad maps from the Detroit Terminal Railroad allowed for a reconstruction of pre-urban crisis Detroit which would have been difficult to accomplish without the 29 maps from the railroad. There are many industries located in and around the industries served by the railroad that would be difficult to track since the company names are not listed. This process of reconstructing industrial landscapes could be applied to any cities that have historical maps, like Sanborn maps, but this series is unique because industry is reconstructed in the context of a local railroad.

Hannah Larsen is a Master of Arts candidate in Applied Geography and Geospatial Science.