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Overview | |
---|---|
Locale | northern Illinois |
Dates of operation | 1836 (chartered); 1848 (in service)–1864 |
Successor | Chicago and North Western |
Technical | |
Track gauge | 4 ft 8+1⁄2 in (1,435 mm) standard gauge |
The Galena and Chicago Union Railroad (G&CU) was the first railroad constructed out of Chicago, intended to provide a shipping route between Chicago and the lead mines near Galena, Illinois. The railroad company was chartered on January 16, 1836, [1] but financial difficulties delayed construction until 1848. [2] While the main line never reached Galena, construction to Freeport, Illinois, allowed it to connect with the Illinois Central Railroad, thus providing an indirect route to Galena. A later route went to Clinton, Iowa.
After the Erie Canal was completed in 1825, immigrants flooded into the Midwest from the East. [3] Chicago’s location, at the southwestern end of Lake Michigan with a short, easy portage to rivers flowing south and west, made it a strategic point for white settlers moving through—as it had been for Native peoples before them. [4] The white population in the region expanded exponentially, creating both markets and products that would need transportation.
One particular market that had Chicago leaders’ attention was centered in Galena, Illinois, [5] a town named for the most common form of lead sulphide. [6] Long mined by Native peoples and French explorers, substantial lead deposits in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa became known to settlers from the East in the early 1800s. [7] St. Louis had a monopoly on shipping lead from Galena down the Mississippi River by steamboat to link to markets on the East Coast. But merchants and miners in Galena wanted a quicker, more direct route to Lake Michigan. [8]
The Illinois and Michigan Canal was chartered on February 13, 1835, to provide a water route from Lake Michigan to the Illinois River and then to the Mississippi. [9] However, work on the canal didn’t officially begin until 1836, and various issues delayed construction, [10] so the canal wasn’t completed and operable until April 1848. [11] Once completed, the canal did in fact carry significant amounts of cargo, as its successor the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal still does.
But merchants in Galena thought a railroad would provide lower costs to transport goods more directly to and from Chicago, then on to the East Coast. [12] Historian Patrick E. McLear notes that boosters on the North Side of Chicago—including the railroad's future president, William Butler Ogden—also favored a railroad line coming into the city from the north, which they believed would help balance trade patterns that had so far favored areas south of the Chicago River. [13] [14]
And so the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad was chartered on January 16, 1836, initially capitalized at one thousand shares of $100 each, for a total of $100,000. The first stockholders’ meeting took place on May 23, 1836, at which a board of directors was elected; on July 3, 1836, the board elected Theophilus W. Smith as president. [15]
The G&CU was one of seventeen railroads incorporated in that legislative session, [16] seven of which failed within two years. [17] New railroad companies were risky ventures, because they had to spend huge amounts on construction, rolling stock, and storage and maintenance facilities before they could even begin to make money. While communities in the Midwest wanted railroads, the population simply wasn’t great enough to fund and support railroad services. [18] Knowing this, the G&CU’s commissioners initially sought financing from investors in the East, [19] and on August 4, 1836, they increased the amount of stock for sale to $500,000, aware that building a railroad would cost much more than $100,000. [20]
However, the Panic of 1837 played havoc with fundraising of any sort. Few people had money to invest in a railroad, and several Directors of the company had to resign as they themselves were engulfed in financial problems. Though the Board did commission a survey of the route from downtown Chicago to the Des Plaines River, they could not do anything further. [21]
Things seemed about to change when Elijah K. Hubbard got involved, purchasing an overwhelming majority of G&CU stock—79 percent, in fact; he also provided $30,000 for construction costs, so the railroad had funds to work with until late 1838. However, Hubbard died in May 1839 of tuberculosis, at which point it was revealed that he had been silently representing Elihu Townsend, an Eastern financier who was a director of the New York and Erie Railroad. To show Townsend that things were moving, William B. Ogden worked with developer Walter L. Newberry to plot a general route for the railroad, and several towns along the route held public meetings to demonstrate support for continuing construction. But Townsend was not convinced, offered no further support, and did nothing with his shares. [22]
Everything came to a halt. Construction was not resumed. After their final meeting on November 22, 1837, the Directors of the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad did not meet for years. [23] The G&CU was no longer a functioning company.
William B. Ogden led the movement to reinvigorate the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad. When the G&CU was first chartered, Ogden had been in Chicago for less than a year, overseeing his wealthy brother-in-law’s land investments north of the Chicago River. [24] He had already worked to support railroad development as a young legislator in the state of New York, taking the lead in March 1835 to argue for state support of the New York and Erie Railroad. He asked fellow legislators to help build “continuous railways from New York to Lake Erie . . . through Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, to the waters of the Mississippi,” creating “the most splendid system of internal communication ever yet devised by man.” The legislation passed, and his work was seen as a resounding success. [25]
More interested in business than politics, however, two months later Ogden agreed to become the Chicago director of the American Land Company, arriving in May 1835. Although he himself was not wealthy, through his New York connections he had the trust of many rich investors. After two years in Chicago, Ogden was handling financial affairs for about a hundred Eastern investors, [26] working with, on average, around $1 million of their funds. As his clients’ profits grew, so did his own fortune. [27] He was a savvy businessperson, well liked in Chicago, and he seems to have been a natural leader. In 1837 he was elected the first Mayor of Chicago, [28] and in subsequent years he “was a leader in nearly every Chicago institution and investment enterprise in the 1840s and 1850s.” [29]
As he had been in New York, Ogden was particularly interested in building transportation networks. He invested in—and became president of—a steamboat company that operated for two years, linking Chicago with the western terminus of the Michigan Central Railroad. [30] He and a partner got the contract to dig the Illinois and Michigan Canal, which they completed a few years after the Panic of 1837 had calmed down. [31] Although both ventures strained him financially, he successfully avoided bankruptcy. It was only natural, then, that he became interested in reviving the moribund Galena and Chicago Union Railroad.
As the years had gone on with no railroad service, frustrated mine operators in Wisconsin had begun to use wagon companies to transport lead to Madison and then on to Milwaukee. Newspapers in Milwaukee documented the exponentially increasing shipments of lead, taunting Chicagoans that this trade suggested “Milwaukee is destined to be the greatest town on Lake Michigan.” [32] As time went on, more towns in northwestern Illinois demanded action, to the point where supporters from Chicago realized that they might also lose the Galena market to the Madison-Milwaukee wagon companies. [33]
Ogden and his associates began planning. In 1845, a group of businessmen from Galena, Rockford, and Chicago met in Rockford to organize a convention of interested parties from along the G&CU route; the convention began in Rockford on January 7, 1846. According to D. W. Yungmeyer, “the Chicago group was so well organized that it practically took over all the official chairs, committee heads, and about everything else, and because of its readiness with resolutions, statistics, and so on, secured the whole-hearted consent and approval of . . . everything [they] proposed.” [34] Delegates voted to create an organization that would take on the task of resurrecting the Galena and Chicago Union, appointing a committee which included eight Chicago representatives. [35]
William Ogden did not attend because he was in New York meeting with Elihu Townsend. [36] With Ogden’s eastern connections and his support of the New York and Erie Railroad—of which Townsend was a director—Ogden was in a good position to negotiate with Townsend. According to the original 1836 charter, if the G&CU company did not build a railroad within ten years, it would be disbanded as a corporation, and Townsend would lose everything he had invested. An amendment to the charter in 1837 had extended the construction deadline by five years, [37] so they were still within the 15-year construction period, but it wasn’t clear that Townsend planned to do anything on his own. If he were to let the new, still unofficial, group take over, Townsend could expect a profit if they were successful. Ogden was thus able to purchase corporate control of the G&CU from Townsend in exchange for further stock in what would essentially be a new company taking on the mantle of the first charter. [38]
When Ogden returned from New York with control of the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad Company, the new board of directors elected him as company president, on February 17, 1846. [39] A year later, on February 24, 1847, the Illinois legislature amended the railroad’s charter to fit the new circumstances, setting the company’s capital at $3 million. [40] [41] The Galena and Chicago Union was back in business.
The railroad was constructed starting in March 1848, and was completed to Freeport in 1853. The first westbound train out of Chicago departed on October 25, 1848, pulled by a used Baldwin-built locomotive named Pioneer. [42] [43] When construction reached the Fox River at Elgin in 1850 passengers going farther west could transfer to the stagecoach lines. The railroad extended to Rockford by 1851 and ended construction at Freeport in 1853. The Illinois Central Railroad, using the G&CU construction crew, completed the Freeport to Galena route in 1854 following the stage route already established by Frink, Walker and Company.
"The Pioneer," the first locomotive on the road, arrived at Chicago on October 10, 1848, nearly thirteen years after the charter was granted. In 1850, the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad was completed as far as Elgin. The railroad and the Illinois and Michigan Canal were vital in the development of Chicago, and the population of the city tripled in the six years after the opening of the canal. Eventually other railroads were built and Chicago became the largest railroad center in the world.
In 1862 the G&CU leased in perpetuity the Chicago Iowa & Nebraska and the Cedar Rapids and Missouri Railroad building westward from Clinton and Cedar Rapids in Iowa and including a bridge and ferry across the Mississippi river. [44] [45] This was to be the first railroad to reach Council Bluffs, Iowa and connect with the First transcontinental railroad which was being constructed westward by the Union Pacific Railroad in Omaha, Nebraska. The 1862 map by G. Woolworth Colton shown here lays out the various lines in operation at that time. [46] The G&CU and its leased Iowa roads consolidated with the Chicago and North Western Railway in 1864. This new consolidated railroad completed a connection without transfer from Chicago to Council Bluffs and Omaha in early 1867. [47] [48] The C&NW merged with the Union Pacific Railroad over a century later in 1996.
Today, the G&CU's main line between Chicago and West Chicago is a busy commuter service, jointly operated by Union Pacific and Metra as the Union Pacific / West Line. The remainder of the line from West Chicago to Rockford is still in service carrying only freight (though Amtrak service to Rockford has been proposed and planned) with local industrial spurs in Rockford and Loves Park. The route between Rockford and Freeport is abandoned, and is being converted into a rail trail.
Stations between Chicago and Freeport included the following:
From West Chicago to Clinton:
Crystal Lake Branch
Aurora Branch
St. Charles Branch
William Butler Ogden was an American politician and railroad executive who served as the first Mayor of Chicago. He was referred to as "the Astor of Chicago." He was, at one time, the city's richest citizen.
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