Initially planned as an ambitious land grant railroad which would run the length of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan, poor finances and politically motivated routes frustrated these aims.
The AL&TB was one of several railroads chartered in the 1850s to take advantage of a land grant program instituted by the federal government.
As proposed in the route would run from "Amboy by Hillsdale and Lansing, and from Grand Rapids to some point on or near Traverse Bay.
The new route's odd shape prompted a Lansing newspaper to dub it the "Ram's Horn Railroad.
"[1] That epithet had been applied earlier in the decade by Iowa newspaperman James Morgan to a proposed road from Dubuque to Keokuk, whose route was also determined by political considerations and ultimately was not built.