Initially, the site of modern Lake Station was the starting point of two Amerind trails leading to Fort Dearborn. Later it became an early stagecoach depot stop, as the Fort Dearborn-Detroit Stagecoach Route passed through the site during the wet season. The location became known as Lake Station as far back as 1851 when it began to serve as a depot, the western terminus of the Michigan Central Railroad (on what would later become its Detroit to Chicago line). This was the first train station in Lake County. The Michigan Central Railroad built a park and railroad shops around its two-story depot. A year later, in April 1852, George Earle mapped out and platted a town of about on the site, continuing its name of Lake Station.