See my 2014 post here on "Potential rivals to Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, and Cleveland":
***
A few years ago, reading a soc.history.what-if post on "Great Ports That Never Were, " I remembered having read somewhere that Michigan City, Indiana, today a small and rather run-down industrial city (though the proximity to the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore and the presence of a riverboat-casino have attracted some tourism) was once a rival to Chicago as the major port for the south end of Lake Michigan. Anyway, looking this issue up led me to Jon C. Teaford's *Cities of the Heartland: The Rise and Fall of the Industrial Midwest*
http://books.google.com/books?id=cHvo-Nr4bFkC&pg=PA20 which has an interesting discussion of the fact that
"Before Cleveland, Chicago, Detroit, and Milwaukee emerged as the chief lake cities, they had to defeat an array of competing towns that dreamed of an equally grandiose future. At the mouth of each creek entering the Great Lakes, speculators laid out a town and promoters boasted of an exemplary natural harbor capable of sheltering a fleet. Scores of paper towns and wilderness trading posts vied for top position. In the battle for commercial supremacy that raged during the 1830s and 1840s the urban 'big four' of the Great Lakes had to vanquish these hopefuls, either by exposing the falsehood of their claims or by ensuring that lawmakers did not authorize canal or harbor improevements that benefited these rivals...
"For example, the Ohio cities of Sandusky and Toledo momentarily posed a threat to Cleveland and Detroit. Located on a large protected bay, Sandusky was, according to one local booster, 'the most eligible point in the whole Northwest for a great commercial city' and a leading contender for the northern terminus of the Ohio Canal. Instead, in what Sandusky residents viewed as 'the most stupendous fraud perpetrated,' Ohio's legislators named Cleveland as the outlet for the waterway. Years later business leaders in the angry city were still complaining of 'the partiality and blindness of early state legislation' which 'retarded the wise designs of nature, by building up rivals.'
"Situated at the mouth of the Maumee River and the northern outlet of the Wabash and Erie and Miami and Erie canals, Toledo enjoyed advantages that Sandusky lacked. Prognosticators of urban greatness frequently placed it at the head of future metropolises, above both Cleveland and Detroit. Yet Toledo's promise far outpaced its performance, and with only thirty-eight hundred residents in 1850 it was running considerably behind its competitors. Local newspapers lamented that Cincinnati at the southern terminus of the Miami and Erie Canal was stealing trade from the lake port. Moreover, the commerce that passed through Toledo seemed to generate little local employment. In 1850 the *Toledo Blade* admitted: 'The fact that but few men are necessary to do an immense commercial business, is perhaps more strikingly illustrated in the history of our city than in any other port in the Union.' With less than a quarter the population of Cleveland and one-fifth the inhabitants of Detroit, Toledo was already permanently overshadowed. An early lead gave its rivals economic supremacy.
"Meanwhile to the west Hoosier promoters hoped to produce their own version of Chicago at the town site of Michigan City. Surveyors claimed that the site offered the best anchorage along the short Indiana coast of Lake Michigan, though sand frequently blocked the harbor, preventing ships from unloadng at the shore line. Perhaps more advantageous was Michigan City's designation as the northern terminus of the Michigan Road, a state-constructed highway running from the Ohio River to the Great Lakes. During the speculative boom of the mid-1830s, the combined attractions of port and road lured perhaps as many as three thousand residents to Michigan City, and the dollars of scores of investors poured into the community. A young settler from Connecticut wrote his parents that those who invested 'in land early in the spring' would 'double and treble [their investment] in the course of six months.' Yet federal appropriations for harbor improvements proved inadequate, and the economic bust of the late 1830s deprived the Hoosier port of possibly as one-third of its population. At the close of 1837 a local storekeeper summed up the prevailing opinion when he wrote: 'This place is not what we anticipated for business--and besides that, not a pleasant place to live in.' Chicago surged far ahead of its Hoosier competitor, and by mid-century Michigan City had an unenviable reputation as the graveyard of Great Lakes shipping. Visiting its hazardous harbor, one obsever recorded, 'Standing upon the pier, as far as the eye can reach, you can see wrecks on either beach.'
"Chicago and Milwaukee also faced initial competition from hopeful rivals on the western shore of Lake Michigan. Both Racine and Kenosha, then known as Southport, were laid out in the 1830s, each at the mouth of a minor river leading into the lake. Like Milwaukee and Chicago, these settlements needed federal appropriations for harbor improvements if they were to surpass their competitors, and consequently the goal was to obtain funds for one's own port while denying money to one's rivals...In all of the cities, federal aid fell short. But with superior, though flawed, natural anchorages, Milwaukee and Chicago pulled well ahead of Racine and Kenosha. At midcentury, Racine had only five thousand residents and Kenosha an unimpressive thirty-five hundred.
"Thus by 1850 Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, and Milwaukee had risen above the pack and dashed the hopes of former rivals. In an age when water access to the East was all-important, the superior harbors and canal connections of these cities made them winners in the urban race. The harbors of Racine, Kenosha, and Michigan City proved inferior, and Sandusky remained without a canal link, As a consequence, none would ever enter the front ranks of midwestern cities."
So does anyone see any way the onetime rivals to the Big Four could have been more successful? For Sandusky, the obvious POD is to make it rather than Cleveland the northern terminus for the Ohio Canal. As for Racine, Kenosha, and Michigan City, could the inferiority of their natural harbors be made up for by more generous federal appropriations to improve the harbors and by state construction of roads or canals leading to them? (OTOH, Michigan City did have the Michigan Road; and Toledo shows that even the combination of a seemingly favorable location and a canal do not guarantee success when other cities have had a head start.)
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...icago-milwaukee-detroit-and-cleveland.306688/
