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1865–1880
The railroad that made Granger was built as one link in a Lansing-to-Chicago project, by a company most of its passengers never heard of. The Peninsular Railway was incorporated in Michigan on 3 October 1865 to build from Battle Creek to Lansing; its forty-five miles between those cities opened at the turn of 1869–1870 — the company's archival record gives December 1869, and the standard modern history gives 13 June 1870 for the entire Battle Creek–Lansing line, a dating conflict the sources carry and this section prints without choosing. The Peninsular Extension Company, incorporated 3 January 1868, was the vehicle for the southward build from Battle Creek toward the Indiana line at Milton — 64.44 miles, completed in 1872 on the archival record — and the consolidated Peninsular's trains reached South Bend on 11 September 1871. The rails those trains ran on crossed this frame diagonally, northeasterly out of Mishawaka through Penn and Harris townships: the track through Harris Prairie was laid in the 1871 construction season that joined Battle Creek to South Bend, and the Granger ground had a railroad before it had a post office — the post office dates to 1875 — or a name the record can prove.
The Indiana end was finished by a sister company: the Peninsular Railway Company of Indiana, incorporated 14 October 1869, built the 55.6 miles from the state line to Valparaiso, opened by October 1873, where the line joined the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago and Lansing trains could run through to Chicago. On 15 August 1873 the Peninsular consolidated with the Port Huron and Lake Michigan Railroad as the Chicago and Lake Huron Railroad, holding two disconnected pieces — Port Huron to Flint, and Lansing to Valparaiso — until the Chicago and North Eastern's completion in 1877 closed the Flint–Lansing gap. The Grand Trunk Railway of Canada, fighting William Henry Vanderbilt's Michigan Central for a Chicago route of its own, bought the components in 1879, built its own Valparaiso–Chicago link, and opened the through Port Huron–Chicago line for traffic on 8 February 1880. What that meant on this ground is the thing to hold: from 1880 the farm township's single track was a segment of a Portland-to-Chicago international main line, and the hamlet at its crossing with the Edwardsburg road stood on one of the continent's through routes — a fact out of all proportion to the hamlet, and the explanation for everything the station entry records.
Sources: Library and Archives Canada, Grand Trunk properties in the United States and Peninsular Railway Company records (RG30) — incorporations, mileages, the 1872 extension completion, the 15 August 1873 consolidation, the 8 February 1880 through opening; Chicago and Lake Huron Railroad and Peninsular Railway corporate histories (the 11 September 1871 South Bend opening; the 7 October 1873 Valparaiso completion; the December 1869 / June 1870 dating conflict, with Stimson & Dunbar and the ICC valuation report's 1872 noted in the same record).