In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

uuuuuuuuu Building a Mighty Fine Line The Chicago and Rock Island Railroad Roald D. Tweet On the morning of October 1, 1851, in a vacant Chicago lot just west of Clark Street and south of Jackson, a “help-wanted” sign arose: “Good railroad work for the winter. Apply to Sheffield and Farnam, contractors, Chicago and Rock Island Railroad at 12th Street.” The response was good. Chicago was swelling with a flood of Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine of 1847–1851, and they were eager to work. Those hired were sent to the Chicago and Rock Island’s first railroad camp at Prairie Avenue and 22nd Street (now Cermak Road), then the southern city limits of Chicago. Teams of mules and oxen with slip scrapers were gathering dirt from borrow pits on each side of the slightly elevated railroad tracks. Under the supervision of Henry Farnam, the general contractor, and his assistant, Samuel B. Reed, in charge of the construction gang, the railroad embankment would head due south toward Englewood, five miles away, before curving westward to Joliet, and then toward its final destination , the Mississippi River at Rock Island, 181 miles away. At Englewood , the Chicago and Rock Island tracks would connect with the Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana Railroad just coming around the tip of Lake Michigan from the east. On May 22, 1852, this Indiana line became the first railroad to use the Chicago and Rock Island tracks for access to Chicago. Meanwhile, back at the 22nd Street construction site, the beginnings of the new railroad attracted little fanfare or attention; no ceremony, no reporters, no mayors or other dignitaries. By the fall of 1851, railroads were no longer headline news. A dozen railroads had come and mostly gone on the Illinois prairie. As early as 1834, Illinois Governor Joseph Duncan convinced the Illinois legislature to approve construction of a state-owned-andoperated railroad, the Northern Cross Line, which ran from Quincy on the Mississippi across the state to Danville on the Illinois-Indiana border. Only the fifty miles from Meredosia to Springfield was ever built, but the first train to operate in Illinois began on this stretch in May of 1842.1 Several other early railroads struggled to survive as well. Chartered in 1836, the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad and the Illinois Central Railroad both had run into financial troubles in the late 1830s but were still alive. On December 15, 1848, the Galena and Chicago Union began service on a small stretch between Chicago and the Fox River. The Illinois Central was resuscitated by a new 1850 charter. Its main line between Cairo, at the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, to the terminus of the Illinois and Michigan Canal at Peru, was in the planning stage. Just to the east of the Chicago and Rock Island project, skirting the shore of Lake Michigan, the Illinois Central was surveying a fourteen-mile stretch from Chicago to Calumet, intending to connect with railroads from the East Coast. A short railroad was operating between Aurora and West Chicago by 1851, and two others had already begun construction at the Mississippi River at Alton and East St. Louis. In addition to these railroad projects already under way, a dozen or so other railroads were vying to be the first to reach and cross the Mississippi River. According to the Rock Island Advertiser of November 23, 1853, Mississippi crossings were planned at an average of every sixteen miles between Dubuque and Keokuk. In addition to Rock Island/Davenport, these included Dubuque, Savanna, Fulton, Muscatine, New Boston, Burlington, Fort Madison, and Keokuk. It is no wonder, then, that this latecomer, the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad, attracted so little attention. In contrast to the other Illinois railroad projects with grander visions than they were able to carry out, the original Rock Island road had begun in 1847 as a modest, regional venture of some eighty miles, designed merely to connect two waterways, the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers. Even then, the project remained on hold until 1851, when a new charter extended the tracks all the way to Chicago. What no one could have guessed on October 1, 1851, was that most of the difficulties lay behind. Just over two years later, on February 22, 1854, the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad would become the first to connect Chicago and the Mississippi River and, via the Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana Line, to provide a continuous...

Share