Railroads Effect Chicago Essay Research Paper The

Railroads Effect Chicago Essay, Research Paper

The nation network of railroads laid from 1848 through the Civil War, and

the steam powered locomotives that traversed them, supplied Chicago with

vast new markets, resources, and people who quickly transformed it from a

quiet Frontier village into a highly populated industrial powerhouse. The

Chicago of 1830 was hardly a city at all. Fort Dearborn located near the

fork of what is now the Chicago River was bogged down with mud and

tormented by disease and Indian wars. By the 1833 when the city was

incorporated, a warehouse, dry good’s store, and hotel had all been built.

William B. Ogden, the first mayor of Chicago was also the first to attempt

to give Chicago a railroad. He chartered the Galena and Chicago Railroad

in 1836, but it collapsed with the economic disaster of 1837 (Berger 3).

Ogden tried again in 1846, and on October 22, 1848 Chicago’s first

locomotive, “Pioneer”, was loaded onto the tracks (Casey, Douglas 59). In

retrospect, “Pioneer” turned out to be a fitting name for the city’s first

train, because by 1866 there were more than forty railroads serving

Chicago and the city’s population had skyrocketed to just under 300,000.

There were many problems that needed to be resolved starting in the 1830s,

before a railroad could become a versatile enough to be a cost effective

carrier of freight and people. The nation’s original tracks had been

built mainly of wood, although cheaper than iron, it was quickly decided

that iron’s durability was well worth the extra cost. Another development

was the placement of ballas, or pebbles, that covered the bottom of the

tracks and added weight and stability along with drainage to the tracks.

Also, the trains were known to collide head on into grazing animals. The

problem lay in how to keep the animal from being pulled under the train

and causing it to derail. This answer came with the placement of a hood

plate on the front of the locomotive so that whatever hit the train would

be pushed harmlessly in front of it and could later be cleared without

endangering the train. Other major safety issues found solutions with the

utilization of lights and horns (Gordon 27-33). By 1848, when Chicago was

ready to start building railroads, the technology had already been

developed enough to conduct real business.

Charters for railroads leading to Chicago soon began to pour in.

After the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad was completed shortly after

1853, it merged with the Chicago and Northwestern Railway which began its

long march to Greenbay WI. Soon came the Illinois Central, the Chicago

Rock Island and Pacific, and the Chicago Burlington and Quincy. Many more

came and connected Chicago to nearly every part of the US (Gordon 151).

If one looked at a map of all the major trunk lines that stretched over

the United States, he would see “a wheel with Chicago as the hub” (Berger

22). The busy development of all these new railroads furnished the

developing Chicago with huge markets, to both the east and the west.

Chicago’s destiny as center of industry was set, but it would still take

some time for Chicago to take advantage of its potential.

The first of the markets was the ever-expanding frontier with its

agricultural surplus that lay to the west and north of Chicago. In the

frontier, a town’s distance from a railroad determined what its cost for

trade and travel would be. To minimize these costs, new cities and farms

popped up very close to the railroads (Martin 81). Train loads of New

Englanders came to these new villages in search of the free homesteads

that they saw in newspaper advertisements and pamphlets back home. These

men and women became the farmers who ended up producing surplus crops

which they desired to sell (Gordon 35). According to Mayer, as they

looked for their most profitable course of action, their goal was a

destination with the most choices of routes, the highest competition, and

therefore the lowest rates (Growth 122). With connections to many of the

nation’s railways, Chicago marked the spot to the farmers of the West.

Chicago was the perfect outlet to sell their heavy and relatively

inexpensive crops. The railroads in Chicago had laid the foundation for

its success limited only to the ingenuity of the capitalistic market.

To the east lay Chicago’s second market, New England. By the

1850s, this region was industrialized and was producing vast quantities of

manufactured goods. Facing much the same dilemma as the West, New England

realized that Chicago was a perfect spot to export its goods. A majority

of these “manufactured goods” was “through” traffic for Chicago and after

a short layover was loaded onto other trains to continue on west (Casey,

Douglas 122). These manufactured goods included building materials,

industrial tools,

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