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Detroit, Grand Haven and Milwaukee Railway

American defunct railroad

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionDec 12, 2023
Entity authorityQ3024776 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Detroit, Grand Haven and Milwaukee Railway is a defunct railroad which operated in the US state of Michigan during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Itself the product of several consolidations in the 1870s, it became part of the Grand Trunk Western Railroad in 1928.

The DGH&M was formed from the ruin of Detroit and Milwaukee Railroad, a successor road to the Detroit and Pontiac Railroad, one of the first roads organized in the state of Michigan. The Great Western Railway, a Canadian company, had taken financial control of the D&M in 1860 after it defaulted on debt payments. The D&M entered receivership in 1875; in 1878 Great Western purchased it outright and refinanced the debts. The reorganized company bore the name Detroit, Grand Haven & Milwaukee Railway. Its Grand Rapids, Michigan station was located at the corner of Plainfield and East Leonard.

The new company possessed a 189-mile (304 km) line stretching from Detroit in the southeast to Grand Haven on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. By 1882 the road came under the ownership of the Grand Trunk Railway of Canada when the Grand Trunk acquired the Great Western, but it was not formally consolidated until 1928.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Detroit, Grand Haven and Milwaukee Railway” as american defunct railroad. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Detroit, Grand and Haven.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1928, 1860, 1875, 1878—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1878-01-01. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Detroit, Grand and Haven providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Detroit, Grand Haven and Milwaukee Railway”, the useful work is to connect “american defunct railroad” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 12, 2023. The linked authority identifier is Q3024776. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1928, 1860, 1875 and 1878.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  2. Expand the search: follow Detroit, Grand Haven and Milwaukee Railway primary sources, Detroit, Grand Haven and Milwaukee Railway archive and Detroit research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Detroit, Grand Haven and Milwaukee Railway” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.