In this installment of "Stories of Kalamazoo," Dr. Willis Dunbar begins a series of broadcasts about the origins of transportation systems in Michigan by exploring the way Michigan's early settlers found their way to the state. Dunbar discusses the natural barrier created by the Allegheny Mountains and highlights the importance of the Cumberland Gap and other early colonial roads for crossing the mountains into the Midwest. He argues that while the earliest settlers of Michigan came overland from Indiana and Ohio, the most important development in transportation opening up Michigan to settlers from the east was the completion of the Erie Canal in 1825.
Read
