page_title: History of rail transportation in the United States
section_title: Galena and Chicago Union Railroad
hierarchical_section_title: History of rail transportation in the United States / Environmental history of railways / Galena and Chicago Union Railroad
caption_attribution_description: Illinois regions map for use on Wikivoyage, English version
context_page_description: Wooden railroads, called wagonways, were built in the United States starting from the 1720s. A railroad was reportedly used in the construction of the French fortress at Louisburg, Nova Scotia, in New France in 1720. Between 1762 and 1764, at the close of the French and Indian War, a gravity railroad is built by British military engineers up the steep riverside terrain near the Niagara River waterfall's escarpment at the Niagara Portage in Lewiston, New York.
  Railroads played a large role in the development of the United States from the industrial revolution in the North-east to the settlement of the West. The American railroad mania began with the founding of the first passenger and freight line in the nation of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1827 and the "Laying of the First Stone" ceremonies and beginning of its long construction heading westward over the obstacles of the Appalachian Mountains eastern chain the following year of 1828, and flourished with continuous railway building projects for the next 45 years until the financial Panic of 1873 followed by a major economic depression bankrupted many companies and temporarily stymied and ended growth.
context_section_description: The Galena and Chicago Union Railroad was the first railway to be built from Chicago. It never reached Galena, Illinois, but it reached Clinton, Iowa, and Freeport, Illinois. This railroad marked the beginning of Chicago's economic dominance in the Midwest  though transportation of goods such as agriculture and bison hides. Railroads affected the American environment by opening up unexplored, immense tracts of the American wilderness for settlement commercialization.
  The idea behind a railroad to Chicago was to steal Midwestern agricultural business from St. Louis, Missouri and Madison, Wisconsin. The area around Chicago was ideal for a railroad because it was flat and grassy. Citizens of Chicago believed they could use their environment for commercial gain by actually buying goods grown from the land as well as increasing the value the value of adjacent land neighboring the railroad. The Galena and Chicago Union railroad underwent construction in March 1848 to have the railroad run through Chicago, a booming Midwest town. In order to fund this, local Illinoisans pledged together to build a railway because of the potential economic prosperity. William Cronon writes, ”By the following April [1849], over twelve hundred people had pledged to buy stock hypothetically valued at about $350,000, though they had paid only about $20,000 in actual cash.” Farmers were enamored with the idea of a railroad because transporting crops and goods became much easier and more effective than traveling on dirt roads that could easily become muddy or impassable, so they pledged a lot of their money towards the venture. The process of local funding was stock installments.
  By 1852, the Galena and Chicago Union railroad supplied Chicago over half of its wheat. This statistic changed the way people thought about the environment and its railways because railways through the countryside provided Chicagoans with increased wealth; railways became a symbol of mastery over land by being able to transport anything across terrain. This mastery coupled with an aligning of railroads with prosperity and wealth changed the way Chicagoans saw railways. It was a beacon of hope and deliverer of goods.
caption: A current map showing Chicago, Galena, Springfield, and St. Louis
exif: {}