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CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS OLD AND NEW
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CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS OLD AND NEW
FROM INDIAN TRAIL TO MOTOR ROAD
by
MILO M. QUAIFE
with an introduction by JOY MORTON
Published by D. F. KELLER & COMPANY
CHICAGO 1923
Set up and Electrotyped August 1923
Printed October 19*3
Copyright 1923 by Joy Morton
Printed in U. S. A.
Reference
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Birth of a Metropolis ii
II. The Road to Chicago 29
III. The Vincennes Trace 51
IV. The Road to Ottawa and the Southwest .... 72 V. The Thoroughfares to the Lead Mines 87
VI. The Green Bay Road 105
VII. The Plank Road Era 122
VIII. The Commerce of the Prairies 138
IX. Stage Coaches and Travel 154
X. Taverns and Tavern Life 168
XI. Dangers of the Highway 183
XII. A Bridal Tour in Pioneer Illinois 205
Appendix: Guide to the Chief Points of Historical Interest Within
a Day's Journey of Chicago 217
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ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS
PAGE
The Old Ways Frontispiece
The Highway System of Pioneer Chicago 6
The Greenville Cession of 1795 at Chicago 12
The Indian Cession of the Canal Route 16
The First City Plan of Chicago 18
Chicago as Seen from the Prairies in 1845 26
Chicago as Seen from the Lake in 1852 28
The-Walk-in-the-Water^ First Steamboat on the Upper Lakes . 36
The First Train on the Erie and Kalamazoo Railroad . . 48
An Early Advertisement of the Erie and Kalamazoo Railroad 50
En Route to the Land of Promise 56
A Night Encampment of Emigrants 70
A Tavern of the Thirties 78
Competition in Transportation in the Pioneer Era ... 82
The Galena Levee in 1844 88
Scott's Army Trail from Chicago to Beloit 96
A View of Milwaukee in the Forties 114
A Typical Stage Line Time Table 120
Chicago and Vicinity in 1852 132
An American Stage Coach of the Twenties 154
The Chicago Stage Office of Frink and Walker . . . . 156
Rapid Transit on the Chicago-Galena Line in 1841 . . . 160
A Settler's Log Cabin 168
Another View of a Settler's Cabin 170
Some Typical Advertisements of Pioneer Hotels . . . . 180
The Perils of Pioneer Travel 199
Points of Chief Historical Interest Adjacent to Chicago . 220
An Archeological Map of Chicago and Vicinity .... 236
A Reminder of a Vanished Race 240
Once the Home of Brigham Young 250
THE' HIGHWAY SYSTEM OF PIONEER CHICAGO
Adapted from Rees Map of 1852. The red lines show the principal modern thoroug fares. They parallel closely those laid out by the pioneers.
FOREWORD
The period from the incorporation of Chicago to the coming of the railroads (from 1837 to 1852), as I view it, was the critical period of Chicago's history. Citizens of the village of about 3,000 people, surrounded by miles of flat, marshy land, had little basis to expect a big town here except the hope of a connection with the Mississippi River waterway system through a canal, which it was hoped sometime, somehow, might be built and which, eleven years afterwards, was, after various vicissitudes, completed.
In the meantime, the town grew steadily. Its exports of raw material and imports of manufactured goads, as shown by the meagre port records of the time, increased pretty steadily and were, at all times, greater in amount than necessary for the support of the little town, indicating that, in spite of poor roads and bad transportation, its people were doing business with the hinterland and making Chicago, in that early day, the central market for surrounding territory.
Dr. Quaife has happily selected this period for his book, and in admirable fashion has pictured the life, the travelers, and transportation methods before the coming of the canal and the railroads; he describes an eventful period which has hereto- fore had but little consideration, and has succeeded in linking the old with the new in a most interesting way.
Advertised schedules of the stage lines, in the forties, indicate that the promise of about 75 miles per 24-hour day was thought to be "rapid transit," but, in practice, half as much was considered pretty fair going. In 1850, the "fast" packet boats on the Illinois and Michigan Canal made the journey from Chicago to La Salle in twenty to twenty-five hours.
FOREWORD
The period from the incorporation of Chicago to the coming of the railroads (from 1837 to 1852), as I view it, was the critical period of Chicago's history. Citizens of the village of about 3,000 people, surrounded by miles of flat, marshy land, had little basis to expect a big town here except the hope of a connection with the Mississippi River waterway system through a canal, which it was hoped sometime, somehow, might be built and which, eleven years afterwards, was, after various vicissitudes, completed.
In the meantime, the town grew steadily. Its exports of raw material and imports of manufactured goo^s, as shown by the meagre port records of the time, increased pretty steadily and were, at all times, greater in amount than necessary for the support of the little town, indicating that, in spite of poor roads and bad transportation, its people were doing business with the hinterland and making Chicago, in that early day, the central market for surrounding territory.
Dr. Quaife has happily selected this period for his book, and in admirable fashion has pictured the life, the travelers, and transportation methods before th,e coming of the canal and the railroads; he describes an eventful period which has hereto- fore had but little consideration, and has succeeded in linking the old with the new in a most interesting way.
Advertised schedules of the stage lines, in the forties, indicate that the promise of about 75 miles per 24-hour day was thought to be "rapid transit," but, in practice, half as much was considered pretty fair going. In 1850, the "fast" packet boats on the Illinois and Michigan Canal made the journey from Chicago to La Salle in twenty to twenty-five hours.
Chicago is somewhat given to boasting of its "I Will'* spirit. Doubtless there is now and always has been such a spirit here, but it seems to me, after reading Dr. Quaife's ac- count of the trials and tribulations of our early Chicagoans, that the germ of that commendable spirit originated under very adverse circumstances and was most effectually promul- gated by the founders and first settlers of this remarkable city.
It gives me great pleasure to write this sjiort introduction and to suggest that Chicago's Highways, Old and New, should be read by everyone interested in Chicago's history and partic- ularly by every motorist who likes to take his family for a week-end outing in the beautiful country within a motor day's radius of our Garden City, now so greatly extended by the superb hard roads of Illinois. The contrast, as indicated by the maps showing the old and the new Illinois, graphically illustrates the difference between then and now, and if this book serves to quicken a general interest in the historic and beautiful country of which Chicago is the metropolis, it will indeed have accomplished much.
Joy Morton
PREFACE
Highways are essential to the Hfe of mankind, and no people, however primitive, has been able to exist without them. From the dawn of civilization their development and administration has been one of the chief concerns of govern- ment, and It Is no mere coincidence that the architects of the greatest state of ancient times were also the greatest road builders of the world prior to the nineteenth century. In the chapters that follow I have endeavored to reconstruct for the entertainment of present-day readers a picture of the now- forgotten life of the pioneer highways which made possible the development of Chicago In the days before the coming of the railroad. The men and women who founded the splendid group of commonwealths which now border the shores of Lake Michigan endured In performing the task hardships and privations to a degree quite unknown to us of the present time. To them posterity owes a debt of gratitude which can best be discharged by appreciating and further improving the beauti- ful land they won from savagery to civilization. It Is my hope that the volume here presented may contribute somewhat to this end by aiding the reader to gain a better understanding of the pioneer beginnings of the country he Inherits.
The valuable collections of the Chicago Historical Society have been freely placed at my disposal In preparing the book, and I wish publicly to express my Indebtedness to that In- stitution and to Miss Caroline Mcllvalne, Its librarian. In particular I have enjoyed the privilege of utilizing the ar- cheologlcal maps of Mr. Albert F. Scharf, whose lifetime work in the field of Chicago archeology Is deserving of more wide- spread recognition than has as yet been accorded him. It
remains to express my obligation to Mr. Joy Morton of Chicago, whose generous interest and support has made possible the writing and publication of the volume. To his cooperation and intelligent criticisms it owes much of what- ever value it may be found to possess.
MiLO M. QUAIFE
CHAPTER I
THE BIRTH OF A METROPOLIS
THE year that witnessed the close of the World War was marked by the death at Chicago of a woman who in infancy had begun her residence here in 1826. Difficult would it be to find in the annals of history record of a stranger transformation than the one compassed by the span of this single life. Her early childhood was passed at a remote stockade in the wilderness and on her plastic mind were stamped indelible memories of scenes of panic fear which attended the Indian wars of 1827 and 1832 and the visitation of Asiatic cholera. Her aged eyes looked out upon the world's fourth metropolis, from whose streets rose a babel of tongues stranger and more confusing even than the Winnebago and Potawatomi she had learned to lisp in childhood. From its consciousness Indian scalping-knife and Asiatic cholera were equally remote, while its soldiers, from ranging the valley of the Des Plaines in search of Black Hawk's warriors, had gone to storm the Hindenburg Line and shatter the might of Imperial Germany.
The growth of modern Chicago has afforded, since its first beginnings, food for wondering comment, and its explanation has been the occasion of much bewilderment. Seldom has a great city arisen amid natural surroundings more unpromising than those afforded by the site of primitive Chicago. The sluggish river slipped into the lake over a sandbar which effectually blocked the entrance to vessels, and nowhere within a hundred miles could shipping find shelter from the storms which were wont to rage with peculiar violence at this end of Lake Michigan. A few miles to the westward ran a continental watershed but a few feet in height. The river itself commonly ran with no perceptible current, and to the horizon limit the
CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
landscape stretched away in one monotonous level of flat uniformity. Entrancing, indeed, was the prairie at certain seasons of the year, but the melting snows of spring or a heavy rain at any time transformed it into a vast, shallow lake, over which the canoe of the red man or the occasional bateau of the fur-trader plied its way regardless of the course of the river.
The consequences of such an environment from the view- point of human occupation are sufficiently obvious. During much of the year early Chicago presented all of the attributes of a first-class marsh. Of drainage, as of serpents in Ireland, there was nothing until the townsmen in the fifties by a magnif- icent exercise of will power and energy lifted the city bodily from the morass in which it had been built up to its present level. As for highways, during the dry periods in summer one might travel anywhere over the prairie sod, which afforded an excellent footing for horses. In spring and autumn, however, and after a rain at any time the road quickly turned to a bot- tomless sea of mud, the despair of all who were compelled to traverse it. Little wonder is it that until a recent period the western states were dotted with pioneers who were fond of recalling that they had come through Chicago on their journey west, and that they "wouldn't take a quarter section there as a gift."
From his particular point of view, the pioneer farmer was correct in his judgment, yet a wider knowledge would have shown him that nature had marked the site of early Chicago as the spot where a great city should arise. Cities are the off- spring of commerce, and they commonly develop at points on the highways of traffic where a break in transportation occurs. Even a slight familiarity with the physiography of the interior of the continent, combined with a knowledge of the working of economic law, would have sufficed to assure the observer of the future destiny of Chicago. How the matter presented itself to the minds of far-sighted contemporary observers is well re- vealed in the story of Arthur Bronson and Charles Butler, who first visited the place in the summer of 1833.
'^^l^'aQf'
THE BIRTH OF A METROPOLIS
Bronson and Butler were two shrewd business men of New York, whose attention had been directed to the western country by the events of the Black Hawk War. They con- cluded to investigate the situation with a view to possible investments, and their attention was directed to Chicago by no less a person than General Scott, whose unhappy expe- riences there the preceding summer had not blinded him to the future promise of the place. On their arrival, in August, 1833, they found a mushroom village of two or three hundred souls in the early flush of its first real boom, infested by thousands of Indians gathered for the impending council of peace with the Great Father. To the east lay the territory of Michigan with a population of 20,000 souls, most of them gathered in the vicinity of Detroit. The northern half of Indiana as yet contained but a few scattered settlers, while between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi stretched a vast unoccupied expanse of land, covered with luxurious vegetation, beautiful to look at in its virgin state, and ready for the plow of the farmer. "One could not fail," wrote Butler at a later time, "to be greatly impressed with this scene, so new and extraordinary, and to see there the germ of that future when these vast plains would be occupied and cultivated, yielding their abundant products of human food, and sustaining millions of population. Lake Michigan lay there, 420 miles in length north and south, and it was clear to my mind that the produc- tions of that vast country lying west and northwest of it on their way to the eastern market — the great Atlantic seaboard, would necessarily be tributary to Chicago, in the site of which even at this early day the experienced observer saw the germ of a city destined from its position near the head of the lake and its remarkable harbor formed by the river, to become the largest commercial emporium of the United States."
It is pleasant to record that the statesmanly foresight of these men found adequate reward, both of them reaping fortunes within a few years from their investments in Chicago real estate. Since the world had as yet no comprehension of
13
CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
the astonishing era of railroad development which lay im- mediately at hand, this early forecast of Chicago's future was uninfluenced by any knowledge of the factor which has con- tributed most to the city's present greatness. They took immediate cognizance, however, of that other factor so potent in the upbuilding of Chicago, its location on Nature's great central thoroughfare between the waters of the Great Lakes and those of the Mississippi River system.
The prosperity of Chicago and her possibilities of future growth have alike been conditioned, at every period of her existence as a city, by the character and extent of her highway systems. These have been of a threefold character, comprising waterways, country thoroughfares, and railroads. To deal with the second of these is the particular task of the present volume, but the waterways come first in point of time, if not of present importance, and some consideration of them neces- sarily enters into every discussion of the origin of Chicago.
Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that Chicago owes her very existence to the fact of her strategic location on one of the most important water routes of North America. It was no mere chance that led the first white man who ever explored the upper Mississippi Valley to the site of future Chicago. In the primitive state of the country the waterways possessed an importance unknown to the present generation. The Chicago- Illinois river route constituted one of the natural thorough- fares leading from the St. Lawrence River system to the Mississippi, and the Chicago Portage was one of the five great "keys of the continent." So low is the continental divide at this point that in times of spring floods or heavy rains it was frequently covered with water, and the Des Plaines at such times discharged through the south branch of the Chicago into Lake Michigan, as well as down its normal channel. This circumstance a recent generation has turned to account by performing the feat, novel in human history, of reversing the flow of the Chicago, thereby sending the city's sewage down
14
li
THE BIRTH OF A METROPOLIS
the Illinois River instead of into the lake, whence its water supply is drawn.
Under such physiographical conditions it is not surprising that the first explorer who ever visited this region should conceive the idea of connecting Lake Michigan with the navigable waters of the Illinois. With statesmanly prevision Jolliet, in 1673, called his government's attention to the advantages which would accrue from cutting a canal across the Chicago Portage. His hasty tour of observation afforded him no adequate conception of the difficulty and magnitude of the improvement proposed, but his vision was transmitted to posterity and almost two centuries later found realization at the hands of another race.
From the first entrance of the American government into the Northwest its officials comprehended the strategic impor- tance of the Chicago-Illinois waterway. When in 1794 Anthony Wayne broke the power of the northwestern tribes- men in the battle of Fallen Timbers, a portion of the price of victory extorted from them in the ensuing treaty of Greenville was the free use of this highway, and the cession of reserva- tions at Chicago, Peoria, and the mouth of the Illinois on which forts might be erected to safeguard it.
A beginning was made to this end with the construction of Fort Dearborn at the mouth of the Chicago in 1803. The purchase of Louisiana from France in the same year gave to the Illinois river route an added importance for the United States. Down it in the spring of 1805 came Colonel Kingsbury with a company of troops from distant Mackinac to establish Fort Bellefontaine opposite the mouth of the lUinois, and Fort Dearborn thereupon became a link in a chain of outposts set to guard the frontier from Mackinac to the Gulf of Mexico.
The lUinois and Michigan Canal is peculiar among im- provements of this character in the fact that during the early years of agitation of the project no local constituency was concerned in it. On the contrary, it was visioned as a
15
CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
work of national interest and importance long before the territory of Illinois had acquired a corporate existence. The exertions made by General Wayne during Washington's administration to acquire control of the Illinois waterway have already been noted. Following the acquisition of Louisiana in 1803, the vision gradually dawned upon the country of connecting New York with New Orleans by one grand continuous internal waterway. To do this the Hudson must be connected with Lake Erie, and Lake Michigan with the Illinois.
As yet the commercial demand for such a work was slight, but the disasters on land encountered in the War of 18 12 served to emphasize anew the military importance of a safe and practicable highway from the Lakes to the Mississippi. In concluding treaties of peace with the Northwestern tribes at the close of the war with England the opportunity was improved to secure for the United States the strip of land between Lake Michigan and the Illinois through which the future canal must be built. Investigations of the route by army engineers quickly followed, and in January, 18 19, John C. Calhoun, as secretary of war, submitted a report to Congress urging the construction of a canal across the Chicago Portage.
Meanwhile Illinois had been admitted to statehood in 1818, and contrary to the evident design of the framers of the Ordinance of 1787 its northern boundary had been advanced from the "southerly bend" of Lake Michigan to the line of 42° 30', with the avowed purpose of giving the new state a northern trend through the possession of a com- mercial outlet on Lake Michigan. By this maneuver a local interest in forwarding the construction of the canal was created, and from this time forward until success crowned the enterprise thirty years later, local zeal and enthusiasm for the work took precedence over national interests.
To the canal project the birth of Chicago as a corporate entity was directly due. In 1827 Congress granted to the
16
iC^O
THE INDIAN CESSION OF THE CANAL ROUTE
This cession was secured by a treaty with the allied Tribes of Chippewa, Ottawa,
and Potawatomi, negotiated at Portage des Sioux, Missouri, in August,
1816, by William Clark, Ninian Edwards, and Auguste Chouteau.
THE BIRTH OF A METROPOLIS
State the alternate sections of land in a five-mile strip along either side of the canal for the purpose of aiding its con- struction. After some delay, the state legislature in 1829 made provision for a canal commission of three members, with powers appropriate for the work in view. This com- mission proceeded to lay out the towns of Chicago and Ottawa at either end of the proposed route, and in the sum- mer of 1830 the lots at Chicago were offered at auction to the public. *
Under the sheltering walls of Fort Dearborn there had gradually developed a,, tiny settlement composed of civilian employees of the government, the families of discharged soldiers, and the establishments of the fur-traders. Many of the settlers were Frenchmen who had taken to themselves Indian wives, or were themselves the offspring of such alli- ances on the part of an earlier generation. It is not possible to determine the precise population of this civilian com- munity at any given time, but its approximate size and importance is clear. -As early as the spring of 18 12, when the Indians murdered two of its members on the South Branch, Captain Heald was able to enroll a force of "Chicago militia" fifteen in number from the residents of the settle- ment without the fort. A fate as tragic as any in our mili- tary annals shortly befell this pioneer body of Chicago's soldiery. Three of them deserted to the Indians, indicating by this act their greater affiliation with that race, while the loyal twelve remaining perished to a man in the massacre of August 15.
A new Fort Dearborn arose from the^ ashes of the old in the summer of 18 16, and con tempo iratteously therewith a second civilian settlement began \o (develop olitside the fort. At the time of the Winnebago trouble in 1827 a second Chicago militia company was mustered, but its history, unlike that of its predecessor, is wholly comic. The fire which destroyed the Fort Dearborn barracks at this time is said by a contemporary to have been witnessed by about
17
CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
forty spectators; their number Included, we may be sure, every soul then present in the community. By 1830 its population was probably upwards of three or four score.
The habitations of the settlement had been built at the forks of the river and along the main stream running east- ward to the military reservation. This territory was a part of Section Nine of the United States land survey, one of the alternate sections which by congressional grant had fallen to the Canal Commission. In modern terminology, this section extended from State Street west to Halsted, and from Madison north to Chicago Avenue. On it the surveyor employed by the commission, James Thompson, proceeded to lay out the town plat; but since considerably more than half of the section lies north of the river, he chose to plat only that portion of it extending northward from Madison to Kinzie streets and westward from State to Des Plaines. Within this area of about three-eighths of a square mile, forty-eight blocks and fractional blocks were laid out on the familiar checkerboard plan with parallel streets running north and south and east and west, the only irregularities being such as were rendered unavoidable by the course of the river. East of the town plat, between State Street and the lake, south of the river, lay the Fort Dearborn reservation and north of it a fractional quarter- section which was entered the next year by Robert Kinzie on behalf of the heirs of his father, John Kinzie, the old Chicago trader. With the exception of Canal, Market, and Lake, and the several Water streets, the derivation of which is sufficiently obvious, Surveyor Thompson named his streets in honor of national or local characters. Running east and west were Washington, Randolph, Lake, South Water, Carroll, and Kinzie. North and south streets were Dearborn, Clark, Market, East Water, West Water, Canal, Clinton, and Jefferson.
The survey was completed and the town plat filed for record on August 4, 1830, which may be taken as the first
18
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THE BIRTH OF A METROPOLIS
definite date in Chicago's corporate history. The public land sale, held the following month, developed but a mod- erate enthusiasm on the part of bidders over the question of real estate values. For 126 lots an average price of $^^ was bid, while two eighty-acre tracts lying just beyond the limits of the town plat went for $1.25 an acre, and another similar tract for a few cents more. Many of the purchasers were, of course, residents of the place, who were simply buying in their homes which had been built on land to which they had no legal title. Aside from these, the purchasers, whether residents or outsiders, were evidently actuated by speculative considerations.
There is little to indicate that as yet those most familiar with Chicago had any inkling of the revolution in real estate values which was so soon to be witnessed here. A delightful story in this connection is preserved by Mrs. Juliette Kinzie. A few months after the land sale of 1830, roused by such developments as had already taken place, Robert Kinzie journeyed to the land office at Palestine and there entered, on behalf of the Kinzie family, the fractional quarter-section lying north of the river and east of State Street which included the old Kinzie home. The tract, lying in the angle formed by the river and the lake, comprised but 102 acres instead of the full quarter-section which a claimant was entitled to enter. Kinzie, who might have entered 58 addi- tional acres elsewhere, returned home without troubling himself to do so. His mother, on learning of this, urged him to claim the cornfield at the forks of the river. Although Kinzie was a business man his response to her argument was a hearty laugh. "Hear mother," he said, **we have just got 102 acres — more than we should ever want, or know what to do with, and now she would have me go and claim 58 acres more!"
The additional acreage was not claimed, because in the judgment of this man, who had spent his entire life at Chi- cago, it would be a mere waste of effort to do so. That he
19
CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
was not alone in his inability to see the future which Chicago held in store, may be seen from a comparison of the prices paid at the sale of 1830 for certain tracts of land with the value of the same tracts twenty-three years later. Thus, the eighty acres which Thomas Hartzell acquired for $124 in 1830 might have been sold for $800,000 in 1853. James Kinzie's eighty, purchased for $140, was valued at $600,000 at the later date. The lot for which William Jewett in his excitement parted with $21 at the land sale of 1830, if retained until 1853 would have netted him $17,000; while John H. Kinzie's larger investment of $119 multiplied itself in the same period to $163,000.
These figures imply, of course, a great growth in popu- lation and a corresponding increase in commercial import- ance. For the first few years, however, the growth was exceedingly slow, and the speculators of 1830 may well have bemoaned, during this period, their recklessness in parting with good money in return for titles to town lots in the wilderness. The season of 1831 witnessed little out- ward change at Chicago, which continued to present the aspect of a village of log huts, with not a single frame struc- ture in the place. Yet the season was marked by two occur- rences significant of the trend of future events. A number of settlers passed through the town, intent on finding homes in the valleys of the Des Plaines and the Du Page; while Cook County was created by legislative enactment, and Chicago became the county seat.
The season of 1832 was in every way abnormal. With the spring came the panic occasioned by the incursion of Black Hawk's warriors into Illinois. Fort Dearborn had been without a garrison since May, 1831, but its walls afforded the only shelter available to the settlers of the Des Plaines and the Du Page, and to Chicago they fled in wildest terror. The normal population of perhaps 100 souls was quickly swelled to five times this number, and the confusion and crowding were presently intensified by the arrival of detach-
20
THE BIRTH OF A METROPOLIS
ments of Michigan militia and regular soldiers. Housing accommodations were strained to the utmost in the effort to shelter the fugitives, and even the food supply soon became inadequate for the sustenance of the multitude which had so suddenly assembled.
In July came General Scott, bringing several hundred soldiers from the East to the scene of the Indian war. With him came also the Asiatic cholera, and at the news of its approach the Indian peril was forgotten. Townsmen and settlers alike betook themselves to sudden flight before the dread presence, and over night, as it were, Chicago was emptied of its civilian population. Only those remained who were compelled by the stern demands of duty, and for weeks the place was but a military lazaret whose occu- pants were engaged in fighting the plague, and giving hasty burial to those who fell before it.
Ere autumn, war and cholera had alike departed. The townsmen returned to their abandoned homes, and life at Chicago resumed once more its wonted aspect. Meanwhile, far away from the tiny Fort Dearborn community events had been preparing which were shortly to terminate, rudely and forever, Chicago's long slumber. For a generation, by Wilderness Trail and National Road, settlers had been pouring over the mountains and down the Ohio into the lower West. With the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 was afforded for the first time a practicable highway con- necting the settled East with the Great Lakes. Along it in the ensuing years streamed an ever-increasing host of settlers, taking possession of western New York and northern Ohio, and pouring on into the wilderness of southern Michigan and northern Indiana.
For Chicago, the Indian war had two results of exceeding consequence. It brought about the extinction of the Indian title to the land between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi, and the removal of the red man farther west. Of equal significance, perhaps, it caused hundreds of men to be taken
CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
upon an enforced excursion through the entrancing wilder- ness of northern IlHnois and southern Wisconsin. The effect produced upon their minds we have already seen illustrated in the case of their commander, General Scott. They returned to their homes carrying marvelous tales of the country's surpassing beauty, and of the wealth in for- ests, mill sites, and farms which awaited the coming of the settler. In hundreds of eastern communities these reports were absorbed with keenest interest, and the ambition was kindled in the breasts of the hearers to become sojourners in this new land of promise.
The first wave of the tide of migration into the new Northwest reached Chicago with the spring of 1833. Most of the homeseekers passed through the place to find loca- tions farther on. Some, however, attracted by the com- mercial promise of Chicago, ended their journey here. In either event they inade their contribution to the city's upbuilding, for its growth depended upon the development of its back country, and every homestead established in the wilderness west of Lake Michigan involved the addi- tion of another source of tribute to Chicago's permanent prosperity.
At the beginning of 1833 the place was still a village of log huts, the only frame building being the warehouse of George W. Dole, which had been erected the summer before. The season was one of feverish activity, however, and at its close dozens of new frame buildings might be seen where but one had stood before. They were, to be sure, of flimsy construction, hastily thrown together in the cheapest and rudest manner, but their presence afforded convincing evidence that a vigorous, throbbing life had replaced the langorous atmosphere of old at the forks of the Chicago.
Building developments aside, the season was marked by two other occurrences of note. A canal implied a harbor fur shipping at Chicago. Congress had long since lent its countenance to the canal project, but as yet there was no
THE BIRTH OF A METROPOLIS
harbor, by reason of the sandbar which blocked the mouth of the river. In March, Congress voted $25,000 for a har- bor at Chicago, and on July i the work of construction was begun. By cutting a channel through the sandbar the river was afforded a direct outlet to the lake, and the work begun by the army engineers was completed in the spring of 1834 by the Des Plaines River, which sent its vernal flood down the Chicago with such force as to dredge the channel deep enough to permit the entrance of the heaviest vessels. Piers to north and south of the new river-mouth, extending five hundred feet into the lake, completed the work of the engi- neers, and for the first time shipping found safe and adequate anchorage at the south end of Lake Michigan.
The other event of importance in the expanding annals of Chicago was its incorporation as a village in August, 1833. At a preliminary election held on August 5 to elicit the will of the townsmen on the question, twelve votes had been cast in favor of the measure and only one in opposi- tion. The negative vote was given by a man who lived up the South Branch, several miles away; on what theory he was permitted to participate in the election, contempor- aries have neglected to enlighten us. Evidently the result of the preliminary election was a foregone conclusion, over which the majority of the electorate abstained from wast- ing valuable time. Far different was it in the election for town trustees, held five days later. The entire electorate, twenty-eight in number, came to the polls, and thirteen of them consented to appear in the role of candidates for office. The state law required at least 150 persons to form a corporate town, and it seems evident from this first elec- tion that Chicago's population was dangerously close to the minimum. The arrivals of 1833, however, were prob- ably not eligible to vote.
The council and treaty held with the Potawatomi in the early autumn, one of the most picturesque events in Chi- cago's annals, brought together, in addition to several thou-
23
CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
sand red men, a motley throng of white men, government officials, fur traders, claimants, speculators, and rogues of varying degree. In October occurred the sale at auction of the "school section," lying immediately south of the town plat and embracing the land between State and Halsted streets, extending southward from Madison to Roosevelt Road. This area embraces today the greater portion of Chicago's Loop, probably the most congested business dis- trict on the face of the globe. The intersection of State and Madison streets at its northeast corner is popularly supposed to be the busiest street corner on earth. The land had been subdivided into 144 blocks of approximately four acres each, and these were sold, mostly on credit, at an average price of $6.72 per acre.
The sum realized is said by one chronicler to have been "beyond expectations." Although the price paid marks a considerable advance over the $1.25 an acre paid at the land sale of 1830, it is evident that "expectations" were still far from extravagant with respect to Chicago real estate values. The blocks of the school section, cut up into lots, afforded, together with the canal lots in Section 9, the lots on which the speculative craze of 1835 and 1836 originally fed. As the mania grew, however, fresh "additions" were hastily platted and thrown on the market to feed the flame.
We may leave to the professional economist the task of expounding the forces which lead men periodically to em- bark upon an era of hopeful speculation with its inevitable aftermath of financial stagnation and despondency. Here it will suffice to note that the middle thirties saw the devel- opment of the wildest land craze the country has ever undergone, while 1837 ushered in perhaps its severest period of depression. At Chicago, the focal point of the western migration, the speculative mania raged with peculiar intensity. Throughout 1834 the tide of settlers thronged the town, and under this stimulating influence signs of a real estate boom became evident. Confined within reasonable bounds, such
24
THE BIRTH OF A METROPOLIS
a movement would have been justified by the substantial facts of the economic situation. But with the passing months legitimate business transactions gave place to frenzied speculation for its own sake. Numerous tales of individual experiences have been handed down to us by contempor- aries, but the underlying spirit of the time is perhaps best illustrated by the story, reported in the first issue of Mil- waukee's first newspaper, of this conversation between two Chicagoans:
"I say," inquired one of the gentlemen, "what did you give for your portrait?" "Twenty-five dollars," was the reply, "and I have been offered fifty for it."
Nor was the speculative mania confined to Chicago real estate. All around the shores of Lake Michigan, on every inlet and creek, and for scores of miles inland, town-sites were platted with enthusiastic zeal, and lots in them were bartered with eager abandon at ever-mounting prices. The pioneer historian of La Salle County relates that he set out some small apple trees on his farm, and stuck a stake in the ground by each tree to mark the location. A passing stranger soon stopped to inquire the name of the town he had laid out. On another occasion he called at a log cabin where half a dozen farmers were assembled. They had evi- dently been engaged in high speculation throughout the day, for one of them, addressing the newcomer, said with a complacent slap of the thigh, "I have made 1 10,000 today, and I will make twice as much tomorrow." From the further conversation it developed that he had been the least suc- cessful of the entire company.
The pretentious scale of these paper towns may be illus- trated in the case of Kankakee City, at the junction of the Des Plaines and the Kankakee. In its palmiest day this metropolis never contained more than seventy inhabitants; yet its promoters had provided ten public squares, with parks and avenues enough to have afforded a fair nucleus for another New York City. The plat, with its many
25
CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
"additions" covered 2000 acres, and in all the prominent centers of real estate speculation highly ornamented engrav- ings of this city, beautiful with magnificent buildings and busy with the traffic of capacious warehouses and crowded wharves, were on display.
When, in 1837, the bubble burst it brought ruin to most of those who for a season had been reveling in paper for- tunes. For many this meant little loss of real wealth, but merely a return to the status from which they had soared. An illustration may be seen in the case of John S. Wright, long a useful citizen of Chicago. He first landed here, a penniless boy of seventeen, in 1832. Four years later, still a minor, he was worth $200,000. The panic now ensued. Wright was unable to meet his extended obligations, and presently he was as penniless as in 1832. Some, shrewder or more fortunate than the majority, turned their profits into cash in advance of the collapse. Thus Arthur Bronson, of whose advent to Chicago we have already taken note, in the autumn of 1834 bought a tract owned by Captain (afterward General) David Hunter for $20,000. In the spring of 1835 he resold it to his friend, Charles Butler, for $100,000. Butler caused the tract to be subdivided, and offering it for sale within a month, realized the entire pur- chase price from one-third of the lots.
Although the panic brought ruin to numberless individuals, and stayed the growth of Chicago for a season, it was of no significance in the tale of the city's ultimate growth. The conditions determining that growth cannot be better stated than in Charles Butler's account, already noted, of the impressions he formed in 1833 with respect to the city's destiny. With paper fortunes vanishing like the morning mist, men awoke to a realization of the fact that some- thing more than the art of the lithographer is requisite to the building of a city, and after a season of stagnation they bent themselves anew to the task.
The span of Chicago's existence as a village was four years,
26
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THE BIRTH OF A METROPOLIS
from the summer of 1833 to the spring of 1837. In this period the population increased from about 150 to 4170. The village fathers entered upon their duties with becoming gravity, one of their first public acts being the establish- ment of a free ferry across the river at Dearborn Street. A donation had been made by the state of certain lots in Section Nine to aid the new town, and a portion of these, set apart for a public square, still remains the seat of county and city government. On this square the first prison, a log structure, was erected the first autumn, and in November a code of ordinances for the government of the aflfairs of the village was adopted. The first financial obligation was incurred in October, 1834, when the sum of sixty dollars was borrowed to drain and otherwise improve State Street.
In the autumn of 1836, under the influence of the expansive ideas of the period, a movement was begun to secure from the legislature a charter for a city. It was successful, and on March 4, 1837, the change to the new form of govern- ment was made. Although the population was but little over 4000 the corporate limits of the new city were drawn to embrace substantially all of the territory between Twenty- second Street and North Avenue, extending westward from the lake to Wood Street, an area of ten square miles.
For three years, after its incorporation, the city stag- nated. Vivid, indeed, are the recollections which contempor- aries have put on record concerning this trying period. Of similar tenor is the evidence afforded by the census sta- tistics of 1840. But 300 had been added to the population in the three-year period. The city now resumed its onward march, and in 1843 the census revealed a population of 7580, an increase in three years of 3100, or almost 70 per cent. Three more years saw the population of 1843 prac- tically doubled, and in the ensuing four years it doubled again, the census figure of 1850 being 28,269. By 1853 this figure had considerably more than doubled, the three- year increase amounting to 32,400. The next four years
27
CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
saw approximately the same increase and by 1857, the clos- ing year of the period under review, Chicago had become a city of 93,000 souls.
In the light of more recent developments this figure does not seem particularly impressive. Yet all human values are relative in their importance, and the significance of the achievement of these two decades in increasing twenty- three fold the population with which the city had started out in 1837 can scarcely be over-emphasized. Thereby Chicago had become the giant of the Northwest, and had stamped the country west of Lake Michigan with the seal of her commercial supremacy.
The explanation of this achievement is not obscure or difficult. Commerce is the life blood of an industrial city like Chicago, and -the city's highways are the arterial sys- tem through which it circulates. Eastward from Chicago stretched the waters of Lake Michigan, affording throughout nine months of the year a natural highway of unlimited capacity. Westward, in the beginning, the highways re- mained to be created, and it was apparent to all that the future of the city was dependent upon her success in making connection with the back country. The work of establish- ing this connection was begun within a few months after the laying out of the town site by Surveyor Thompson in 1830. It continued throughout the ensuing years until in time a series of radial highways stretched out from the city in all directions, affording connection with all points that lay within practicable distance of Chicago.
To trace in detail the evolution of these highways and describe the life that passed to and fro upon them will be the function of the succeeding chapters. The modern physi- cian places a drop of blood under the microscope and from the examination of it derives important information with respect to his patient's welfare. Along Chicago's historic highways pulsated the commerce of the time, and from an examination of this traffic we may draw a remarkably vivid conception of the life of that bygone period.
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CHAPTER II
THE ROAD TO CHICAGO
WHEN, In the thirties, the dweller on the Atlantic seaboard began to listen to the call of the great West, the choice of route and of time for making the journey were among the matters most anxiously debated. Numerous guide books had been published, all with the purpose of affording the traveler needful information con- cerning the West and the several ways of reaching it, yet families preparing to migrate thither frequently sent out some member to spy out the land, before committing them- selves to the momentous project.
In November, 1831, the editor of the Illinois Monthly Magazine published for the benefit of prospective immi- grants to this state a collection of ''hints" which afford the present-day historian, intent upon his task of recon- structing the life of that bygone period, no less enlighten- ment than they brought the contemporary reader for whose aid and comfort they were written. The season of the year for making the journey will depend, we learn, upon the mode of conveyance adopted. In springtime, west of the mountains, all natural roads are bad from the time when the ground thaws until warm weather; as for artificial roads, or turnpikes, these are so infrequent in the West as to afford but little aid in such a journey and the traveler should leave them entirely out of account in planning his migration.
In the spring-time the bottom lands along the rivers are overflowed, the channels of the streams are full, and travel in any direction is impeded, and at times wholly pre- vented, by high waters. Since "great channels of trade and intercourse" are not yet fixed, all roads are new. The population is increasing rapidly, and trade fluctuates from
29
CHAPTER II
THE ROAD TO CHICAGO
WHEN, in the thirties, the dweller on the Atlantic seaboard began to listen to the call of the great West, the choice of route and of time for making the journey were among the matters most anxiously debated. Numerous guide books had been published, all with the purpose of affording the traveler needful information con- cerning the West and the several ways of reaching it, yet families preparing to migrate thither frequently sent out some member to spy out the land, before committing them- selves to the momentous project.
In November, 1831, the editor of the Illinois Monthly Magazine published for the benefit of prospective immi- grants to this state a collection of ''hints" which afford the present-day historian, intent upon his task of recon- structing the life of that bygone period, no less enlighten- ment than they brought the contemporary reader for whose aid and comfort they were written. The season of the year for making the journey will depend, we learn, upon the mode of conveyance adopted. In springtime, west of the mountains, all natural roads are bad from the time when the ground thaws until warm weather; as for artificial roads, or turnpikes, these are so infrequent in the West as to afford but little aid in such a journey and the traveler should leave them entirely out of account in planning his migration.
In the spring-time the bottom lands along the rivers are overflowed, the channels of the streams are full, and travel in any direction is impeded, and at times wholly pre- vented, by high waters. Since "great channels of trade and intercourse" are not yet fixed, all roads are new. The population is increasing rapidly, and trade fluctuates from
29
CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
one point to another, so that the courses of the roads are often changed before a permanent route is adopted. As a consequence, few roads in the western country are so fixed as to location as to have become beaten by travel or improved by art; and the traveler who ventures forth in the spring must expect to wade through mire and water ankle deep, knee deep, and "peradventure" deeper still.
But the same reasons make the spring the best season in which to travel by water. The streams are now swollen, the largest rising thirty to fifty feet above their low-water mark. Rocks, snags, and sawyers^ are buried far beneath the surface, and the steamboat glides without interrup- tion from place to place, ascending small rivers and finding its way to points far distant from the ordinary channels of navigation. Business becomes active, and the number of boats is increased to meet the demand; the traveler by water at this season meets with no delay, while "the hap- less wight who bestrides an unlucky nag is wading through ponds and quagmires, enjoying the delights of log bridges and wooden causeways, and vainly invoking the name of McAdam as he plunges deeper and deeper into mire and misfortune."
Early in May the waters begin to subside, and for a short period the traveler may proceed in comfort, either by land or water. But this season is brief, and not to be relied upon other than by those who are on the ground and in readi- ness to take instant advantage of its propitious moments. It is like a cessation of arms in war, or a calm in the political world, when the demons of discord are on the fence, ready to pounce down upon the unsuspecting public on either side. If the spring has been a wet one, the roads are still miry, and the traveler who has been allured by the bright sun and brilliant flowers to forsake the steamboat, will find
lA "sawyer" was an uprooted tree, submerged in the channel of the river. Its jagged branches, capable of piercing the sides of the flimsily-constructed boats, constituted one of the deadliest menaces to the safety of river navigation.
30
THE ROAD TO CHICAGO
the effects of winter "lingering in the lap of May." If, on the other hand, the spring has been unusually dry, the waters subside earlier than common, and travel by river becomes uncertain and precarious.
In the autumn, west of the mountains, there is ordinarily but little rain and the weather is mild and steady. The roads become dry and good; many of the smaller streams become entirely dry, while others are so diminished in vol- ume as to render crossing them at the fording places a safe and easy matter. But few rivers can be navigated by steam- boats at this season, while all roads are passable, and many in excellent condition.! Autumn, too, is the season of abund- ance, with ripe crops and fat cattle, when food may be cheaply and easily procured.
Those, therefore, who plan to come west by water should make the journey in the spring; those who elect to travel in stages or by their own conveyance should set out in September. As for midsummer, this season, like the winter, is objectionable on account of the inclemency of the weather. Considerations of both health and comfort unite to urge the immigrant to avoid both of these seasons. With good taverns to be found only on main roads and in large villages, he must expect to meet with hardships to which his life in the East has not accustomed him. Long stages must be made at times; the night's shelter may be a one-room cabin, filled to overflowing, or no house at all, with consequent exposure to the weather. At the best, the journey will prove a drain upon his energy and vitality; if made under the conditions either of winter or of midsummer this strain is needlessly increased. In spring the traveler is saved from both personal exertion and exposure to the weather; in autumn, the air is mild and salubrious, and such exposure is but Httle felt.
^The reader should not too hastily visualize, from these words, roads comparable to mod- ern improved highways; the writer's adjectives are justified only from the relative view- point of the superiority of the prairie roads in autumn over their bottomless condition in springtime.
31
CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
From this informant we learn that the most expeditious route for one setting out from Boston to Illinois ninety years ago was to journey by stage to Providence or New Haven; thence to New York by steamboat; from here to Philadelphia either by steamer or by stage; to Baltimore by steamboat, thence to Wheeling by stage over the National Road; down the Ohio by steamboat to Louisville, and thence by stage to Vandalia, or on to Shawneetown or to St. Louis by water. The route to Illinois by way of the Erie Canal and Lake, and thence across by connecting waterways to the Ohio River, was longer and more circuitous, but prefer- able to the foregoing when heavy freight must be trans- ported. If an all-water route to Illinois was desired, the traveler might journey by sea to New Orleans, and thence up the Mississippi and the Illinois or other tributary to his ultimate destination. The cost of making the combined land and water journey from Philadelphia to St. Louis was estimated at $^^y everything being provided. If one chose to take "deck passage," however, providing his own food and shelter, and indeed everything but the mere vehicle of transportation, the journey might be made for a consid- erably smaller sum.
These "hints" were written at a time when settlement was confined to the southern half of Illinois, and a traveler might journey from Peoria to Chicago without encounter- ing a single human habitation other than those belonging to the red man. Our interest, however, is more largely concerned with the tide of settlement which began pouring into the new Northwest at the close of the Black Hawk War, coming chiefly from New England and the Middle Atlantic states across New York to Buffalo, and thence westward to Chicago and points beyond. It requires but a glance at the map to disclose that to these immigrants to the West the choice of traveling either by water or land was open. If they elected to make the journey by water, as did most aliens, whose landing port was New York, as
32
THE ROAD TO CHICAGO
well as many residents of the seaboard states, the route from New York City was by steamboat up the Hudson to Albany, and thence across New York by canal-boat to Buffalo. Here the chain of the Upper Lakes, stretching away for a thousand miles and more, offered the immi- grant an unbroken, albeit circuitous water passage to Chi- cago. If he chose to make the journey by land, the Genesee Turnpike, evolved from the old Iroquois Trail of the red man, afforded a thoroughfare leading across New York to Buffalo approximately parallel to the Erie Canal. West- ward from Buffalo the road ran along the south shore of Lake Erie, and across southern Michigan and northern Indiana to the fast-rising city at the forks of the Chicago.
In actual practice, western travelers made up numerous variations and combinations of these two main highways to Chicago. Those coming from New England struck the main thoroughfare at Albany, while settlers from points farther west, in southern New York, western Pennsylvania, or Ohio, made connection with it at such points as might be most convenient. These minor streams of travel were not unlike the tributaries of a river system, which sooner or later mingled their current with that of the great parent stream pouring westward from Albany to Chicago. Some made connection with it at Buffalo, others at some point in Ohio, across which state ran several highways connecting the Ohio River with Lake Erie. One great affluent, indeed, the Michigan Road, entered the parent stream only at Michigan City, scarce fifty miles from Chicago. Starting at Madison, on the Ohio River, it crossed the entire state of Indiana from south to north, affording a highway over which thousands of settlers from Virginia and Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina, made their way to the region west of Lake Michigan. At Indianapolis it crossed the great National Road, diverting thus a portion of the stream of migration along this thoroughfare northward through the Chicago gateway. Still another thoroughfare across Indiana
33
CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
ran from Louisville northwest to old Vincennes on the Wabash, and thence onward to Terre Haute, where it struck the National Road as did the Michigan Road at Indianapolis. From Vincennes or Terre Haute the settler might pursue his way due north to Chicago or westward into Illinois and the trans-Mississippi region.
For those immigrants who availed themselves of the water route at all, Buffalo was the great port of embarkation. Once afloat on the Lakes, most travelers continued by water until they reached Chicago ;i but the journey across Lake Huron and Michigan was long and frequently stormy, and many preferred to avoid it by landing at Monroe or Detroit and making their way by land across southern Michigan and northern Indiana. If this phase of the journey was begun at Monroe, the traveler followed the highway known as the La Plaisance Bay Road to its junction with the great Chicago Road running from Detroit to Chicago. Still a final variation in the route remains to be noted, for early in the thirties was opened the highway known as the Terri- torial Road, crossing Michigan from Detroit to St. Joseph by way of Ann Arbor, Jackson, and Kalamazoo.^ Arrived at St. Joseph, the traveler crossed the lake to Chicago in a schooner or (later) steamboat plying between these points; while those who followed the Chicago Road to Niles some- times abandoned it here in favor of a passage by boat down the St. Joseph and thence across the lake.
The history of travel on the Great Lakes would in itself afford material for an interesting volume. The first vessel other than the bark canoe of the red man to plow the waters of the Upper Lakes was the tiny sailboat launched by the redoubtable La Salle in 1679, within sound of the thunder of Niagara, to be used in prosecuting the fur trade. La Salle's
'Many, destined for Wisconsin points, landed at Milwaukee or some other Wisconsin port. But the great line of lake travel was between Buffalo, and Chicago, and many, even of those who expected to find homes in Wisconsin, terminated their lake voyage at Chicago.
'The present track of the Michigan Central Railroad is substantially identical with this route as far west as Niles.
34
THE ROAD TO CHICAGO
Griffin sailed as far as Green Bay, but on the return journey to Niagara with her maiden cargo, vessel and crew alike vanished from human ken. Thus began, with the first sail- boat on the Upper Lakes, the still-lengthening role of mari- time tragedies which characterizes the navigation of these inland seas. Through the French and British periods and into the nineteenth century, tiny successors of the Griffin continued to sail the lakes in slowly increasing numbers, catering to the wants of the fur trade and the remote inte- rior garrisons.
The advent of steam-propelled vessels, which closely coincided with the building of the Erie Canal, marked the opening of a new era in the navigation of the lakes, and in the development of their tributary regions. Although the earlier steamboats were but small and of poor construction, and equipped with engines so feeble as to be unable at times to breast the current of the western rivers or tempests on the lakes,! they nevertheless signalized the advent of a power which ignored the vagaries of the wind, and given stouter vessels and more powerful engines, would ignore the violence of the tempest as well. Travel on the lakes became, for the first time, a matter of reasoned calculation and men laid their plans for a journey with fair assurance of completing it according to schedule.
The first steamboat to make its appearance on Lake Erie was the Walk-in-the -Water in 1818 — named not with reference to its rate of progress, but in honor of an Indian chief. Probably no government inspector could be found today so venial or with standards so lenient as to permit the Walk-in-the-Water to navigate on a mill-pond; yet for
'Ludicrous stories abound in the narratives of travelers concerning the construction and operation of early western steamboats. The steamer Catfish, which plied the placid Illinois in 1836, was capable of attaining a speed of "six miles an hour down stream." The boat had acquired its singularly unpoetic name from the close resemblance of its bow — having no deck forward and with hold exposed to the elements — to the mouth of a catfish. Noah M. Ludlow, pioneer western dramatist, tells of a steamboat journey up the Cumberland River in 1822, whereon after repeated vain attempts to breast the current the captain at length procured the aid of two yoke of oxen, and the vessel under combined steam and bull- power moved triumphantly on her way.
35
CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
several years, until she finally foundered, this tiny vessel, plying between Buffalo and Detroit, was the only steam- boat on the Upper Lakes. Not until 1827 did a steamboat enter Lake Michigan, and five years more elapsed before one reached the head of the lake.
The first steamers that ever made the port of Chicago were those composing the tiny fleet which bore General Scott's army westward to the scene of the Black Hawk War in the summer of 1832. Strictly speaking there was then no "port" to make, since the bar precluded entrance into the river, and the vessels anchored in the open lake, the passengers and baggage being transferred to land in rowboats. The following year, however, saw the beginning of a harbor at Chicago, coincident with the setting in of the first great tide of immigration. Lake traflic, like all things else connected with Chicago, rapidly increased, and new vessels were put in service to meet the ever-rising demand for shipping. For many years, however, the demand con- tinued to outrun the supply; sailing vessels continued to transport the larger part of the freight on the lakes, and even much of the passenger traffic.
As trade and travel increased, contemporary observers found the resources of the language inadequate to afford expression to the feelings of admiration and amazement excited by the spectacle of the scores of freighters and **pala- tial" passenger boats which vexed the blue waters of the lakes. For several years Chicago had no appreciable export trade, and vessels eastward bound resorted to the sand of the lakeshore for ballast. With the filling up of the inte- rior, however, and the development of a system of radial highways giving it access to Chicago, was begun the process which in less than a generation was to make the city the greatest provision market, and one of the greatest ports, on the globe. Ten years after the first export statistics were recorded at Chicago in 1836, there were 1,400 departures of vessels from the harbor in a single season, while fifty
36
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THE ROAD TO CHICAGO
years after the coming of the first steamboat there were over 26,000 arrivals and clearances of vessels, a number greatly in excess of the totals for San Francisco, New Orleans, and New York combined.
Although western steamboats were characterized, in the florid newspaper allusions of the time, by such adjectives as "palatial" and "magnificent," the emigrant who entrusted himself and family to their custody encountered a multi- tude of hazards and discomforts unknown to the present generation. In particular, to the numerous ills of sailboat travel, was added the new and ever-present menace of destruction by fire. With no government inspection either of the construction or the operation of steamboats, the natural greed of unrestrained competition on the part of builders and operators alike, led to disasters of appalling magnitude and frequency. To elucidate the complaisance of the long-suffering public under the accumulated hazards and ills to which all who traveled on the lakes were exposed would afford the theme for an interesting study; more sig- nificant is it here to note, however, that on occasion even the easy-going good nature of the age of Jacksonian dem- ocracy revolted, and a numerously signed "card" would appear in some paper published at the port where the voy- age terminated, retailing to the public the woes experienced on the passage from the misconduct of the captain, or the miserable character of the vessel.
Whatever their starting point might be, all land high- ways leading toward Chicago converged sooner or later upon the great thoroughfare between Detroit and Chicago familiarly known as the "Chicago Road," which consti- tuted, in effect, an extension of the Erie Canal and the Genesee Pike. The latter, projected west from Buffalo across northern Ohio, crossed the Maumee River at Perrys- burg. From this point one route led northward to Monroe and Detroit, and another northwestward through Tecumseh to a junction with the Chicago Road. The portion of this
37
CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
road through western Ohio was known as the Western Reserve and Maumee Pike. Beyond Perrysburg the road ran through the famous Black Swamp, which covered much of northwestern Ohio. This portion of the route was a source of terror to travelers for many years, until at length a macadamized highway was built through the swamp. In the days before this improvement, the thrifty inhabitants of the locality turned the misfortunes of the emigrants to their personal profit by providing relief to travelers who became stalled in the successive "mudholes." So extensive did this industry become, that certain landlords equipped themselves with extra yokes of oxen with which to extend such assistance, and the rights of residents to the "mud- hole" nearest them were mutually recognized. It is even recorded that one tavernkeeper, who had long exercised undisputed control over one particularly fine "mudhole," which he had cultivated with particular care for the profit it brought him, offered his interest for sale on preparing to leave the country, and actually found a purchaser for his self-created franchise.
The beginning of the story of the Chicago Road is lost in the mists of antiquity. Like most great American thor- oughfares, it was originally marked out by the red men, if not, indeed, by the buffalo. From time immemorial an Indian trail had passed southward from Green Bay to Chi- cago, and on around the head of Lake Michigan to Detroit. Another, known in later years as the Great Sauk Trail, passed eastward across Illinois from the Mississippi to the head of Lake Michigan, effecting a junction with the trail from Chicago as it rounded the head of the lake. At Pare aux Vaches — the cowpens — near the modern city of Niles, where the Sauk Trail crossed the St. Joseph River, numer- ous important trails focused. One ran southward from the ancient Ottawa town of L'Arbre Croche above Little Traverse Bay; another, from Saginaw Bay southwestward across the state of Michigan. Still another came in from
38
THE ROAD TO CHICAGO
Fort Wayne — the Keklonga of the red man — which was in its turn the focus of a widespreading system of trails.
Over the Great Sauk Trail for unnumbered generations bands of red men had trooped in single file, intent on mis- sions of peace or of arms, until with the passage of time they had beaten a narrow pathway deep in the soil. From the time of the earliest French occupation of the interior the traders had utilized it. La Salle being probably the first white man to pass this way. After the establishment of military garrisons at Fort Wayne and Chicago, the trails between these places and Detroit acquired a new import- ance for the white man. Over them passed the earliest post- men in the Northwest, soldiers carrying the meager mails or official dispatches, between the several posts. School- craft, who was at Chicago, in 1820, describes the trail, from the point where it left the lake shore at the mouth of Che- min River,! as a ''plain horse path, which is considerably traveled by traders, hunters, and others." He added that numerous cross paths intersected it, leading to diff^erent Indian villages, so that a stranger could not follow it with- out the services of a guide.
The Chicago Road, like many another western thorough- fare, was originally developed as a military highway con- necting the forts at Detroit and Chicago. By the treaty negotiated at Chicago in 1821 with the allied tribes of Chip- pewa, Ottawa, and Potawatomi, the government acquired the right to construct and use a road through the Indian country from both Detroit and Fort Wayne to Chicago. By an act of April 30, 1824 Congress authorized President Monroe to have made such surveys and plans of routes, of roads and canals as he might deem of national importance from either a commercial or a military point of view, or needful for transporting the mails. To carry out this work the sum of $30,000 was placed at his disposal. Among the
iChemin River — the river of the road — was called by the English, Trail Creek. It empties into the lake at Michigan City, Indiana.
39
CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
routes which the President selected for survey was the one from Detroit to Chicago, and one-third of the entire appro- priation was apportioned to it.
The actual survey was begun from the Detroit end in 1825. The engineer in charge began the work on the plan of running the road on nearly straight lines. He soon found, however, that this plan, which entailed cutting a vista for his compass through the dense timber, and spending much time in searching out good routes and eligible river cross- ings, would entail a far larger expenditure than the sum at his disposal. He therefore hit upon the expedient of following the ancient Indian trail. From certain points of view this was an excellent plan, since the red men, in laying out the trail, had in general avoided the worst marshes and sought out the best fording places. They had also traversed the most attractive prairies to be found in southern Michigan, so that when settlers began to come west along the Chicago Road they found the choicest places for settle- ment lying directly upon the great interior highway.
But the trail, viewed as a thoroughfare for the white man, had one great drawback; time was of no particular conse- quence to the Indian and he wasted no energy in removing natural obstacles from his pathway, preferring to go around them. The ancient Chicago trail was, therefore, a highly sinuous pathway, and if the tales of the pioneers are to be credited the survey of the Chicago Road followed its sin- uosities with almost meticulous fidelity. Thus, it is described by one who came in boyhood to settle with his parents upon it as "stretching itself by devious and irregular windings" from east to west, looking, when viewed from some eminence, "like a huge serpent, lazily pursuing its onward course, utterly unconcerned as to its destination."
From Detroit the Chicago Road passed westward up the main channel of the River Rouge and along its southern branch to Ypsilanti in Washtenaw County. Here it turned to the southwest, passing through the village of Saline and
40
THE ROAD TO CHICAGO
on to the crossing of the River Raisin at Clinton, near the border of Lenawee County. From Lenawee the road passed into Hillsdale County near its northern boundary, running due west to the village of Moscow and thence southwest- wardly through Jonesville to Coldwater in central Branch County. From here, still bearing to the south, the road crossed Bronson Prairie and Township, and shortly after entering St. Joseph County came within three miles of the Indiana line. From this point to Bertrand on the St. Joseph, a distance of fifty miles, sinuosities aside, the route kept a due westerly course, passing through the villages of Sher- man, White Pigeon, Mottville, Adamsville, and Edwards- burg. A few miles west of Bertrand the road crossed the state line and traversed the northwest corner of St. Joseph County, Indiana. Entering La Porte County, it passed southwestward through the famous Door Prairie to La Porte, and thence on to the lake shore at Michigan City. From this point it followed the beach the remaining sixty miles to Chicago.
Although the government survey of the Chicago Road was begun in 1825, the transformation of the Indian trail into a highway for civilized travel was made only gradually with the settlement of the adjoining country. Not until 1832 was the survey completed through western Michigan, but a semi-weekly stage had been running out of Detroit to Ypsilanti and Tecumseh as early as 1830. In 1832 the stage line was extended to Niles, the trip between this place, and Detroit being made, when no mishaps were encountered, in three days' time. This was the year both of the cholera and the Black Hawk War, and in consequence of these twin scourges settlement and travel along the Chicago Road were much retarded. With the increased migration which set in the following year, however, stage facilities between Detroit and Chicago underwent a marked development. A tri-weekly line of stages between Detroit and Niles was established, with Concord coaches and stage wagons, and
41
CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
changes of teams at the end of every twelve or fifteen-mile section. In September, stage service was established for the first time between Chicago and Niks. We are fortu- nate in having the narratives of two English travelers who went through on the first stage, each of whom went home and wrote a book upon his American experiences. So deep was the impression made upon each by the vicissitudes of the journey from Niles to Chicago that their narration occupies no inconsiderable portion of each volume.
In 1834, the various interests engaged in operating stages upon the Chicago Road were consolidated under the name of the Western Stage Company, with headquarters at Detroit. The route was soon parceled out into sections, and the western portion, between Jonesville and Chicago, placed under the superintendency of William Graves, with head-. quarters at Niles. Travel had increased so much by 1835 that daily stages were run from Chicago to Detroit, and travelers were compelled to make reservations in advance in order to secure seats. So great was the pressure that places in the coaches became an object of speculation. Later in the season a double daily was put on the road, and in addition to this service "extra" wagons were often called into requisition to transport the throngs of passengers.
Of the stream of settlers which poured westward over the famous old highway from 1833 onward, interesting glimpses have been preserved in the journals of certain travelers of the time. The Chicago Road was at this period one of the great thoroughfares of the country, and the migration which poured along it into the newer West was no less significant or picturesque than that which at a somewhat later period was to immortalize the Oregon Trail. Some indication of its volume may be gained from the figures given us by Amos A. Parker, who in 1834 made a tour from New Hampshire west to Chicago and southward to Texas. He records that 80,000 western immigrants embarked from the port of Buffalo alone that season; no exact figures could be given
42
THE ROAD TO CHICAGO
of the number who continued the journey by land along the south shore of Lake Erie, but an observer informed the writer that he had counted 250 wagons in a single day. This statement finds support in the record of a pioneer who settled at Jonesville in 1836 that "a line of wagons almost continuous" passed through the village daily.
The first real improvement of the Chicago Road came with the establishment of stage coach service upon it. This, as we have seen, was begun at the Detroit end of the line in 1830, and gradually extended westward to Chicago in the autumn of 1833. To fulfill their contracts for carrying the mail the contractors must send the stages through, and they consequently made such minimum improvements as were calculated to insure this result. The comfort of the passengers was, of course, quite another matter; not even the most enthusiastic optimist would have ventured to under- write this.
As late as December, 1836, a Detroit paper described the oldest-settled portion of the road lying between that city and Ypsilanti, as resembling at times the route of a retreat- ing army, "so great is the number of wrecks of different kinds which it exhibits." Six months earlier than this, in June, 1836, the talented English writer, Harriet Martineau, had traveled from Detroit to Chicago, making the journey in an *'extra" supplied by the stage company for the use of her party. As soon as they entered the woods outside Detroit the road became "as bad as roads ever are." Soon some- thing snapped, and the driver of the vehicle cried out that they were "broke to bits." Repairs were made, and the stage proceeded, only to encounter a second breakdown before noon. "Juggernaut's car," observes the author, "would have been 'broke to bits' on such a road."
Jonesville was reached on the second day, with no mis- hap more serious than running over a hog in the road. But the road the third day between Jonesville and Sturgis Prairie, proved "more deplorable than ever." The passengers
43
CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
were several times compelled to leave the coach while it passed the more dangerous places, and these quagmires were, naturally, the places most difficult for pedestrians to negotiate. "Such slipping and sliding; such looks of despair from the middle of a pond; such shifting of logs, and carrying of planks, and handing along the fallen trunks of trees'* as ensued, might well have discouraged any traveler less persistent than Miss Martineau.
From Detroit to Michigan City the country through which the Chicago Road passed presented the usual alterna- tion of woodland and prairie, whose deep rich soil held much of promise to the farmer, but of woe to the traveler. From Michigan City, where the road gained the shore of Lake Michigan, to Chicago the character of the highway was completely changed. Nature has made of this section of the Lake Michigan shore line a vast accumulation of sand hills, whose plant life and geological formations combine to produce an environment of peculiar character and interest. The ancient trail clung to the sandy shore of the lake all the way from Michigan City to Chicago, and for some years this was the route of the Chicago Road. Viewed as a high- way, its character varied with changing weather conditions, from that of a splendid boulevard to the most exhausting and tedious roadbed known to civilized travel. "While we kept at the water's edge," records an immigrant of 1834, "with gentle swells rolling in among the horses' feet, the wheels of our stage would hardly leave a mark on the wet sand, while fifty feet inland the dry sand was nearly im- passable." "After a northwest storm," relates another pioneer, "when the sand was packed by the waves, the drive was just splendid; but when the sand was dry and loose it was just horrible. A good team would make the distance [from Michigan City to Chicago] in six hours when the way was all right, and it was a six days' good drive when the way was all wrong."
How quickly it might on occasion change from one condi-
44
THE ROAD TO CHICAGO
tlon to the other Is graphically revealed in Charles Fenno Hoffman's narration of a trip to Chicago in December, 1833. Near Michigan City the exhausted horses proved unable longer to pull the stage-coach and the travelers, despairing at length of making further progress with the vehicle, abandoned it and mounted the horses. They gained the lake shore just at sunset, and the horses sank to the fet- locks in the deep sand, compelling them to proceed as close to the water's edge as possible. Before long, however, the beach for twenty yards from the surf was frozen hard as stone, so that "the finest macadamized road in the world" would not compare with it. Over this magnificent highway, lighted by the stars of heaven, the travelers rapidly galloped the intervening miles to their destination for the night.
Apparently the way was more often "all wrong" than right, however, for before many years the stage abandoned the beach in favor of a route by way of Baillytown, Thorn- ton, and Blue Island. On both the beach route and the newer one the crossing of the Calumet River was a point of much concern to travelers. The river itself was unfordable but where it debouched into the lake the combined action of river and lake currents had caused a sandbar to be built up beneath the water of the lake on which it was possible for a driver who knew the way to pass around the mouth of the stream. Since the location of the bar was continually shifting, however, and since strangers could not in any event be familiar with it, this excursion into the waters of Lake Michigan was always an adventure of no slight con- sequence.
Of one such passage made in the spring of 1835 by a youth of nineteen years, a vivid recollection was retained for more than half a century. The narrator of the incident had fallen in with a Virginian en route to Illinois with a prairie schooner which contained, in addition to material trappings, his wife and numerous daughters. They had never seen a large body of water before, and gratefully accepted our pioneer's
45
CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
offer of assistance in passing the mouth of the Calumet. His wagon, drawn by oxen, was first driven successfully over its dangerous course. When it came the turn of the Virginian's wagon, however, the women begged the guide to draw nearer the shore. In response to their pleadings he precipitated them into the very danger they sought to avoid, for the bar was formed at the point where the river current lost its force, and the course of safety lay well out in the lake away from the mouth of the river. Veering in too close, the wheels sank in the softer sand near the river and wagon and freight were stalled. Into the water to his arm- pits plunged the guide, an extra yoke of oxen was attached, and the wagon with its cargo of panic-stricken women was pulled safely to shore.
When the stage road was moved inland from the lake shore, about the year 1837, it crossed the Calumet on a bridge of such wondrous construction that memories of its passage were stamped indelibly on the minds of the pioneers. The structure was over sixty rods long, built of poles through- out. Cribs were built of poles for piers, poles were used for stringers, and small poles and split timbers were laid across these to form the floor. One pioneer, familiar with the lake passage around the mouth of the river, had far more fear of the **ever-to-be-remembered-by-those-who-crossed-it" bridge. The effect produced upon travelers by the first sight of the structure is sufficiently indicated in the simple record that they commonly walked across it, rather than ride over in the vehicle. On one occasion a woman and young child came along, and just before reaching the bridge encountered a hornet's nest. The maddened horses dashed over the crazy, swaying structure at full speed, while the woman, unable to check them, in some way managed to place the child on the bottom of the wagon and holding it down with her feet to save it from being jolted overboard, clung grimly to the reins throughout her perilous ride. To the chronicler it seemed that a special Providence must have intervened to save the couple from destruction.
46
THE ROAD TO CHICAGO
The Chicago Road was the first highway in the North- west to yield to the advance of the iron horse, which was shortly to relegate the stage coach to oblivion. Across the ocean George Stephenson in 1829 had made his famous trial trip with the "Rocket" on the Liverpool and Manchester Railroad, and in the autumn of 1830 the first regular rail- way passenger service in the world was established by this line. Within a year and a half from this time the territorial legislature of Michigan granted a charter for the construc- tion of a railroad from Port Lawrence (now Toledo) north- westward to the village of Adrian, and thence to some point on the Kalamazoo River. The road was to be known as the Erie and Kalamazoo Railroad, and the charter per- mitted the use of animals, locomotives, or any other force as a motive power.
For several years after the granting of the charter the project slumbered, but in 1836 ten miles of line were put in operation and the following year twenty-three miles more, completing the road as far as Adrian. Until August, 1837, horses supplied the motive power on this, the first railroad of the Northwest. Then a locomotive which had been con- tracted for in the East was put in operation, and some time later a second engine was procured.
The equipment and operation of this first western rail- road bore but a remote resemblance to the railways of the twentieth century. The engines were about twenty horse- power, and six cars of two tons capacity made a good-sized train. The first passenger coach was a three-compartment affair of twenty-four passenger capacity, whose appearance somewhat resembled a dwelling house of gothic design. The engine was a wood burner with an enormous stack, its fuel being procured from the forests adjoining the right of way and its water from the wayside ditches. The track was ironed with flat bars, known as "strap rail." The ends of these, torn from the stringers by the passing wheels, were not infrequently projected upwards through the bottom
47
CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
of the car with the force of a catapult, impaling with neat- ness and dispatch, the traveler who might be so unfortunate as to come in their way.
On receiving its locomotive the railroad company adver- tised, with evident satisfaction, "Toledo to Adrian — thirty- three-miles — and return the same day!!!!" This schedule, however, must be regarded in the light of an ideal rather than a regular performance. No time of departure or arrival of trains was announced, and the narratives of travelers over the line seem to indicate that an old cut which pic- tures a farm wagon briskly drawn along by the trotting horses in the van of the puffing locomotive was not wholly a matter of the artist's imagination. A passenger who made the journey in the winter of 1841 relates that ten hours were consumed in the outward trip from Toledo to Adrian. The return was begun at seven o'clock in the evening and the train "worked its way along the ice-covered track until we got out of wood and water, when we picked up sticks in the woods and replenished the fire, and with pails dipped up water from the ditches and fed the boiler, and made another run toward Toledo. Passing Sylvania, we got the train to a point four miles from Toledo, when being again out of steam, wood, and water, we came to the conclusion that it would be easier to foot it the rest of the way than try to get the train along any farther. So we left the locomotive and cars standing upon the track and walked into the city, reaching there at about 2:30 A. M."
But the railroad, however primitive, was a marked im- provement upon the highway which it had succeeded. A sig- nificant indication of this fact is afforded by the statement that immediately upon its completion the price of Syracuse salt at Adrian fell from fifteen to nine dollars a barrel. In 1837 the road advertised that emigrants for Indiana, Illi- nois, and western Michigan would save two days' time by patronizing it instead of taking the routes hitherto trav- eled. At Adrian connection was made with stages "for the
48
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Ui Q <
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H
THE ROAD TO CHICAGO
West, Michigan, Chicago, and Wisconsin Territory" — run- ning, of course, over the Chicago Road. Although the panic of 1837 brought financial embarrassment to the road, its demonstrated success as a carrier of passengers and com- merce spurred the business men of Detroit to emulate the example set them by residents of Adrian and Port Lawrence, and in February, 1838, the first train ran from Detroit to Ypsilanti over a track which has since evolved into the Michigan Central Railroad.
Meanwhile, in March, 1837, under the urge of the internal improvement craze of the time, the legislature had made provision for no less than three railroad lines across the infant state, a "southern," a "central," and a "northern," road. The "central," whose opening as far as Ypsilanti we have already noted, was to cross the state on the line of the Territorial Road to its western terminus at the mouth of the St. Joseph River. The southern road was to run from Monroe on Lake Erie to New Buffalo on Lake Michi- gan. Work on these several lines was begun hopefully enough, but the financial crisis which soon ensued involved almost endless delay and difficulty. On the last day of the year 1840, notwithstanding, the southern line ran its first train into Adrian.
In May, 1842, the state commission, which had operated the road thus far, placed a superintendent in charge of it. He proved to be an efficient executive, who brought about a material improvement in the condition of the road. Upon taking charge he found the line in possession of two loco- motives, three passenger cars, and a number of freight cars. He succeeded in establishing direct steamboat con- nections between Buffalo and Monroe, and promptly put forth, for the beguilement of travelers, an expansive adver- tisement of the "most direct, expeditious, and, safest" route for passengers to Indiana, Illinois, and other western points. In September, 1843, the line was opened to Hillsdale, and to care for the increased traffic additional cars and a third
49
CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
engine were purchased. Until this time the passenger cars in use were built on the plan of the cars first used on the Erie and Kalamazoo, having four compartments in each of which were two seats facing each other, with room for four persons in a seat. The compartment was entered by a side door, and had a running board along each side, along which the conductor walked when engaged in collecting tickets. The new cars were built on the general plan of modern passenger coaches, being open from end to end, and having seats on either side of a central aisle.
Hillsdale continued for several years to be the western terminus of the road, and from this point travelers for the West must still proceed by stage or other conveyance over the Chicago Road. In 1846, the state, sick of its experiment with railway ownership and operation, authorized the sale of the southern line, and in December it passed under the control of a private corporation. Under its auspices the road finally entered Chicago in the spring of 1852. Although some settlers still continued to come West over the Chicago Road, its traffic henceforth was chiefly local. As a national thoroughfare, with the building of the railroads it passed into history.
50
ADVKRTl.SKMEXT
TO EMKIRANTS AND TRAVELERS,
ie Erie and Kalamazoo Railroad is now in full operation between
XOI^KDO AMD AORIATNF.
hiring the ensninjjf season trains of cars will run ^^vWily to Adrian, tliere connecting with a line of Stages for the West, Michigan City, Chicago and ^Wisconsin Territory.
Emigrants and others destined for Indiana, Illi- ij.ois and the Western part of Michigan
; K^^ ^y^l^ ^^'^^ Two Days^^^^i
find the corresponding expense, by taking this route in preference to the niore lengthened, tedious •and expensive route heretofore traveled.
All baggage at the risk of the owners.
EllWARD BISSELL,) Commissioners W. P. DANIELS, '-E. c^ K. R. R. (rEORGE CRANE, ) Co.
A. HUUIIES, Superintendent Western Stage Company.
AN EARLY ADVERTISEMENT OF THE ERIE A\D KALAMAZOO RAILROAD
The cut of the passenger coach is purely conventional, being modeled after the earlier
stage coach. The coaches actually used on this road are shown in the
following illustration.
CHAPTER III
THE VINCENNES TRACE
THE birth of modern Chicago in 1833 was directly occa- sioned by the tide of settlement which poured westward by way of the Great Lakes in the years immediately sub- sequent to the opening of the Erie Canal. But the earliest advance of white settlement into the Chicago area was made by men of southern birth and lineage, who about the close of the War of 1812 began pouring into the valley of the upper Wabash. To them we are indebted for the most picturesque and colorful chapter in the life of early Chicago, and from the traffic which they carried on have come the names of two of the city's most famous streets.
When, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, the French took possession of the interior of the continent, one of their main routes of communication between Canada and Louisiana ran from Detroit by way of the Maumee, the Wabash, and the Ohio to the lower Mississippi. To hold this against the encroaching English traders, and to main- tain their influence over the native tribes, a line of posts situated at strategic points along the route was early estab- lished. On a beautiful site 160 miles above the mouth of the Wabash was located the post of Vincennes, and this became, in the course of half a century, a considerable town, ranking with Detroit and Kaskaskia as one of the chief centers of French influence in the interior of the continent.
When New France fell, in 1763, there began for Vin- cennes a period of decline, but the glory of the place had not yet departed. When, in the Revolution, George Rogers Clark laid his plans for the conquest of the Northwest, it was his first desire to march directly against Vincennes, but conscious of his inability to take the place by direct
51
CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
attack, he turned his course against the Illinois towns. These having been taken, and the French inhabitants won over to the American cause, Vincennes yielded itself vol- untarily to the invaders. A few months later Governor Ham- ilton of Detroit descended the Wabash with 500 British and Indian allies, and the Union Jack floated once more over Vincennes. Upon learning the news of this disaster, Clark led his tiny army, consisting largely of French settlers, across Illinois in midwinter and suddenly appearing before Vincennes captured the British fort, to the great delight of the townsmen. Governor Hamilton was consigned to a Virginia dungeon as a reward for his inhuman treatment of the Americans, and Vincennes passed permanently under American control. Thus in the distant valley of the Wabash, at a point remote from the English settlements, was per- formed a feat which completely broke up the British plans for the campaign of 1779, saving the sorely-pressed American cause and gaining the Old Northwest for the United States in the Treaty of Paris of 1783.
Under American domination Vincennes attained a new importance. In June, 1790, following the organization of the Northwest Territory, the county of Knox was created with Vincennes as the county seat. Knox County ran from the Ohio River on the south to Canada on the north, em- bracing, in addition to all of modern Indiana, large portions of Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Most of this region was a wilderness, of course, inhabited only by the Indians.
On July 4, 1800, Indiana Territory came into existence with Vincennes as its capital. It included, besides the mod- ern state, all of Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Under the vigorous rule of Governor W^illiam Henry Harrison, Vincennes was for years the chief center of governmental activity in the Northwest. Here was waged the long con- test with the great Tecumseh, who had established his Indian Utopia at the mouth of Tippecanoe Creek, 150 miles
5^
THE VINCENNES TRACE
up the Wabash from Vincennes. Repeatedly during the years of controversy Tecumseh led his followers down the Wabash to pour into the ears of the Governor his scorn and defiance of the white man. Yet the latter held steadily to his course, which was to eventuate not only in war with the red men but with Great Britain as well. In the autumn of 1811 Harrison took the field against the tribesmen. Advancing up the Wabash, he built Fort Harrison on the site of Terre Haute, after which the natives were overthrown in the bloody battle of Tippecanoe. It was the opening stroke in a war which was to involve the red men in per- manent ruin and give to the United States undisputed con- trol over the Northwest. To Tecumseh the conflict brought a fallen people and a nameless grave; to Harrison, the presi- dency of the United States. Of more immediate interest to our story, the crushing of the Indian tribes opened the valley of the Wabash to the settlers, and with the close of the W^ar of 18 12 they began to take possession of it.
''Over the trail of the savage passes the foot of the white man and civilization dawns." So it was with the settlers who passed into the valley of the Wabash and thence onward to the Kankakee and the Des Plaines. From the falls of the Ohio, across southern Indiana to Vincennes ran the famous Buffalo Trace, which had been marked out and trodden broad and hard by the countless herds of buffalo which made their seasonal migrations from the Grand Prairie of Illinois to the salt-licks and blue grass meadows of Kentucky. Another Indian path ran due south from Vincennes, reaching the Ohio River where now is the foot of Main Street in the city of Evansville. From Shawnee- town, farther down the Ohio, a trail led northward up the valley of the Wabash. There were, of course, still other routes by which the Indians passed from the Ohio to the Wabash, and the latter river was itself a natural highway, traversed by the red man and the trader in canoes and by the white man in flatboats, broadhorns, and steamboats.
53
CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
The Vincennes Trace was in reality a thoroughfare from the Wabash to Chicago. From Vincennes, its southern terminus, an ancient trail led northward through eastern Illinois to the salt springs of the Vermilion, where the city of Danville has grown up. From here it continued north- ward, keeping in general to the higher ground which sep- arated the streams flowing into the Wabash from the tribu- taries of the Illinois. Other trails led up the Wabash from Vincennes to the old Wea towns near the site of modern Lafayette, and on to the Miami stronghold of Kekionga, the site of modern Fort Wayne. From the Kickapoo Falls of the Wabash, near Williamsport, Indiana, an important Potawatomi trail ran northward through Benton and Warren Counties, entering Illinois near the town of Sheldon, Iro- quois County. Here it united with the trail from Vincennes to Chicago by way of Danville, which in the pioneer period came to be known as the Hubbard Trace. At Parish's Grove, in Benton County, Indiana, the main Potawatomi trail was joined by a feeder which came from the Wea towns. In the years when the lordly Potawatomi held sway over the region around the south end of Lake Michigan, this trail was a thoroughfare of much importance to the nation. Running the whole length of the Potawatomi domain, from Lake Michigan to the Wabash, it served to unite all the villages in this region, led directly to the great fishing and hunting grounds of the Iroquois and the Kankakee, and connected the different bands with the trading-post at Chicago on the north and with the ancient Wabash trade centers of Ouiatanon and Vincennes on the south.
The red man left no record of his travels, other than the marks made by his feet in the soil in passing, and for a pic- ture of the life of the old trail we must depend largely upon the imagination. Over it, undoubtedly, passed the Wea war bands to Chicago in 17 15, stirred up by the French to aid in the proposed extermination of the Foxes of Wis- consin. The hopeful enterprise totally miscarried, but a
54
THE VINCENNES TRACE
few years later, in 1730, warriors from the Wabash partici- pated in the great siege and destruction of the Foxes by the French and their red allies in the vicinity of Starved Rock. An expedition of different character over the ancient trace was that of Captain Heald of Fort Dearborn, who in the spring of 181 1 brought his charming bride on horseback through the wilderness from Kentucky to Chicago. In the rooms of the Historical Society one still may see the little trunk in which Rebekah Heald transported her wedding finery and personal treasures on this journey. With the bride came Black Cicely, her slave girl, only to die beneath the tomahawk in the massacre of 18 12. For that occasion the Potawatomi, knowing the hated foe was at last in their power, gathered with eager feet from over all their widespread territory. Most implacable of all were the Wabash bands, who hastened northward with utmost speed along the ancient trail to the anticipated carnival of blood, only to learn on approaching their destination that the work of destruction was over and they had arrived too late.
Four years later a new Fort Dearborn rose from the ashes of the old; the might of the Potawatomi and the Kickapoo had vanished, and although they lingered on for a time in their ancient haunts the work of dispossessing them was about to begin. The period from 18 16 to 1825 was one of unprecedented immigration to Indiana, the settlers crowd- ing up the southward-flowing streams well beyond the center of the state. Near the spot where in 181 1 Fort Harri- son had been established as a wilderness outpost, six years later the town of Terre Haute was founded and lots to the value of $17,000 were sold in a single day. The Indian cession which was known as the "New Purchase," opened all the lands south of the Wabash to settlement, and led to the founding of Indianapolis to serve as the permanent capital of the state. By a cession secured from the Kickapoo in 1820 the Wabash was opened to settlement as far north as Lafayette. In 1824 land sales were begun at Crawfords-
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CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
ville, and this point became the focus for all settlers north- west of Indianapolis. Lafayette was laid out in 1825, and a year later became a county seat; while two years later Logansport was founded at the mouth of Eel River.
Over the several highways leading to the Wabash poured a steady stream of settlers. "Nothing is more common," reported an Indianapolis observer in 1826, "than to see fifteen or twenty wagons passing in a single day, each carry- ing the little belongings of the family that trudges along by its side. Indiana is now teeming with the hordes of immi- gration. Their destination is the Wabash country above Terre Haute."' In the seven years ending with 1827 twenty- one new counties were organized in the New Purchase, and already their population amounted to over 80,000. Indian- apolis had become what it has ever since remained, the great focal center of the state, and through it the immigrant stream moved westward over the Terre Haute, Logansport, and Crawfordsville trails. "Our streets are one moving mass of living men, women, and children, carriages, wagons, horses, hogs, and sheep," reported an Indianapolis editor, "all joyously wending their way to their habitations. The old, middle-aged, and young go together."
Ere long this tide of travel began to press on beyond the Wabash, although settlement in Illinois west of the state line naturally followed after that in Indiana. The salt springs on the Vermilion River were a lodestone which early drew settlers into this portion of the Wabash Valley. Here from ancient times had been an important Piankeshaw village, and here for unknown generations the red men had made salt and wild beasts had resorted from all directions to lick up the salty earth at the spots where the mineral water welled forth. Attracted by these deposits, several families began in 18 19 the settlement which developed into the town of Danville. It was an important point on the Chicago- Vincennes Trace, being itself the focus of a number of trails. By 1830 settlers had located in Iroquois County, at Mil-
56
em
THE VINCENNES TRACE
ford and Old Bunkum, and others were pushing on by way of the Iroquois and the Kankakee to the vicinity of Joliet and the lower Des Plaines Valley. On Hickory Creek, a tributary of the Des Plaines in northwestern Will County, Aaron Friend and Joseph Brown had located as early as 1829. Comparatively little is known of these men, although the settlement they began is of much interest to the story of Chicago's historic highways. Friend is described by the historian of Will County as a "kind of Indian trader." He always had a rather rough set of French half-breeds and Indians around him, and when the latter removed to the West, Friend followed them. It was at the house of Friend that the ball occurred in the winter of 1831, the story of which Mrs. Kinzie has preserved in Wau Bun. To Hickory Creek on this occasion fared three of the five bachelors who then resided at Chicago. With their "city" airs and holiday finery they had little trouble in winning the favor of the girls of Hickory Creek, to the evident chagrin of the uncouth males who lived in that vicinity. But the satisfaction of the Chicago youths over their triumph was somewhat lessened when on going for their steeds, after a night of merriment, to begin the return journey to Chicago, they discovered that these faithful brutes had been shorn of their manes and tails.
Of Joseph Brown we know little, saving the information that he died in the autumn of 1830. His claim to fame is a posthumous one. At the first session of the board of com- missioners of the newly-organized Cook County, held in March, 1831, three voting precincts were created, desig- nated respectively as the Chicago precinct, the Hickory Creek precinct, and the Du Page precinct. A month later the Board made provision for marking out the first two county highways of Cook County, designed to connect the three precincts which had thus been created. One of these roads ran on the line of Madison Street and Ogden Avenue to the house of Barney Lawton at Riverside, and from
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CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
thence "to the house of James Walker, on the Du Page River, and so on to the west line of the county." The other road was to run "from the town of Chicago, the nearest and best way, to the house of Widow Brown on Hickory Creek." It was laid out along the line of State Street and Archer Avenue.
The history of State Street will be forever associated with that of the Vincennes Trace. For the modern beginnings of this thoroughfare we must go back to the closing days of the fur-trade era, and the doings of Gurdon S. Hubbard, one of Chicago's greatest pioneers. Hubbard was a native of Vermont, whose parents had removed to Montreal. Here, while still but a boy, he fell under the romantic spell of the fur-trade, with its aroma of adventure in distant wilds. Engaging as an apprentice with the American Fur Com- pany, he was sent out to Mackinac in the summer of 1818. Here he was assigned to the Illinois River superintendency, and joined the trading "brigade" which each autumn made the long journey in open boats down the eastern shore of Lake Michigan to Chicago, and thence by way of the port- age down the Illinois River. At various points along the river trading stations were established, from which during the winter the men carried the goods on their backs to the Indian hunting grounds. With the opening of spring all assembled on the river and the return journey to Mackinac with the season's accumulation of furs was begun.
The chief obstacle to this traffic was the difficulty of passing the Chicago Portage. It was bad enough in spring- time, when the boats must make their toilsome way against the vernal flood on the Des Plaines at the rate of seven or eight miles a day, the men wading frequently to their arm- pits in the icy water. But in autumn, when the Des Plaines had shrunk to a series of pools scattered at intervals along the channel, and Mud Lake, between the Chicago and the Des Plaines, had become a stinking morass of ooze and filth, through which the men must wade pushing the boats
THE VINCENNES TRACE
along by main force, and frequently clinging to them to escape being engulfed in the swamp, the passage was infin- itely worse.
In 1825 Hubbard was made superintendent of the Illinois river trade and he immediately decided to put in force a project he had long urged upon his predecessor. This was to leave the boats at Chicago on reaching there in the autumn, and transport the goods to the Indian country on pack- ponies. By this plan not only would the difficult and weari- some passage through Mud Lake and down the Des Plaines be avoided, but the goods would be taken directly to the Indians at their hunting grounds, instead of being carried to them by the men in packs on their backs.
Hubbard had already spent one winter on the Iroquois River, his trading station being at the mouth of Sugar Creek, a little below the site of modern Watseka. On becoming superintendent of the Illinois trade in the autumn of 1823, he again located on the Iroquois, fixing his station this time at Old Bunkum, on the site of modern Iroquois. Leaving Chicago with a pack-train of fifty ponies, which had been purchased from Chief Big Foot's village at the head of Lake Geneva, he marked out the trail to his Iroquois River post.
From his station at Old Bunkum Hubbard continued for several years to carry on his trading activities. A farm of eighty acres was put under cultivation, the first in Iroquois County, a log house, together with the necessary outbuild- ings was erected, and the establishment became the head- quarters for the trade of a wide region. Being a man of enterprise and ability, Hubbard opened a line of trading stations southward along the Indian trail almost to the mouth of the Wabash, the post at Danville being the most important inland station. From his headquarters at Bunkum he visited the several posts as occasion might require, and in the spring the furs acquired during the winter's trade were conveyed on pack-ponies to Chicago, and from there
59
CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
sent on to Mackinac in the customary bateaus of the trader.
As the settlements increased along the line of trading posts the Indian trade fell off, and Hubbard gradually gave up his southern posts. Those on the Embarras and the Little Wabash were abandoned in 1827, and shortly thereafter Hubbard built the first frame building — a storehouse — ever erected in Danville. For over fifty years this continued to stand on the south side of the public square. This became the headquarters for the Indian trade for the surrounding region. The red men would file into town on their ponies, sometimes fifty or a hundred in number, with their furs, their squaws, and papooses, and for several days business would be brisk at Hubbard's corner of the square. The days of the Indian in Illinois were numbered, however, and in 1832 Hubbard converted his stock into ''white goods" as merchandise for white people was called. The following year he removed to Chicago, where for over half a century he continued a leading citizen of the place.
The "Hubbard trail," over which Hubbard carried on his fur trade during these years was, of course, but another name for the Vincennes Trace. From Chicago it ran south- ward a few miles west of the state line, passing through the towns of Blue Island, Crete, Grant, Momence, Beaverville, Iroquois, Hoopeston, Myersville, and Danville. From Bun- kum (or Iroquois) to Chicago it was identical with the Potawatomi trail from Williamsport and Ouiatanon. During the pioneer period it became a great highway of travel and traffic between the Wabash country and Chicago. In 1834 the legislature caused a state road to be laid out between Vincennes and Chicago. The commissioners who located it tried hard to get a straighter line and better ground than the Hubbard Trail, but were forced to follow the old track with but little deviation. It was marked with milestones, and was commonly known as the State Road. With the coming of the railroads the old state road was superseded and abandoned, but within the city of Chicago its name still survives in that of modern State Street.
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THE VINCENNES TRACE
Many of the most picturesque incidents in the history of the Vincennes Trace are associated with the masterful personality of Hubbard. Alone of the fur-traders of Illi- nois he successfully made the transition from the trade of the wilderness to the commerce of civilization, and won prestige and wealth as a leader of modern business. Strange indeed was the contrast between his life as an Indian trader and his later business career. The trader's life was one of continual hardship and danger, not less from the untutored red man than from the natural perils of the wilderness. Hubbard was a man of indomitable will, and he possessed a constitution of iron. While in the Indian country he habitually wore a buckskin hunting shirt or a blue capote belted in at the waist with a sash, or buckskin belt, in which was carried a knife and sheath, a tomahawk, and a tobacco- pouch made of mink or otter skin. In this pouch was a flint and steel, together with a piece of punk, to be used in striking a fire. Underneath the outer garment was a calico shirt, breech-cloth, and buckskin leggings. On his feet were mocca- sins and pieces of blanket wrapped around to take the place of stockings. His head was bare, and his hair was long and matted. In winter he carried a blanket, which he sometimes wore in the Indian fashion. Clad in such a garb, with face and hands browned by toil and exposure to the elements, there was but little in outward appearance to distinguish the trader from the savage.
A notable incident in connection with the Vincennes Trace occurred in the year 1827. This was the summer of the Winnebago War, and the settlers at Chicago were panic- stricken over the prospect of a descent of the hostiles upon the place. The nearest settlement from which aid might be procured was Danville, 125 miles away. Hubbard, who chanced to be at Chicago at the time, volunteered to under- take the mission. Starting between four and five o'clock in the afternoon, he reached his trading house at Bunkum at midnight. Pausing only to change horses, he sped on his way.
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CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
The night was dark and rainy, and on reaching Sugar Creek he found the stream over its banks and his horse refused to enter it. There was nothing to do but wait until daylight, when he perceived the cause of the animal's refusal; a large tree had fallen across the trail in such a way as to render the ford impassable. Hubbard swam the stream, and at noon rode into Danville. A settler at once set out to sound the alarm, calling for volunteers to assemble at Danville the fol- lowing evening with five days* rations.
At the appointed time loo men had assembled and organized themselves into a militia company with an old Indian fighter as their captain. It was, of course, a motley assemblage. Some of the men had flint-locks, others muskets, or squirrel- rifles, and some no arms at all. Most of the men were mounted on their own or borrowed horses; a few began the march on foot, but these were soon compelled by the condition of the trail to abandon the enterprise. As for rations, each man provided what he saw fit, but it is recorded that none were without the indispensable pint of whisky to **mix with the slough water" they must drink en route.
The march of this company of frontiersmen over the Hub- bard Trace to Chicago presents a good illustration of travel conditions on an Indian trail. Although it was midsummer, heavy rains had turned the rivers into raging torrents, and the sloughs into open lakes. "We swam the former," records a member of the company, and "traveled through the latter sometimes almost by the hour. Many of the roads were so deep that our men dipped up the water to drink as they sat in their saddles."
The story of the crossing of the Vermilion afl^ords one picture of what lay back of the laconic statement "we swam the streams." Like all the other rivers encountered on this journey, the Vermilion was running bank full with a swift current. The men and saddles were ferried over in a canoe, and an eflfort was made to compel the horses to swim. When the force of the current struck them, however, they would
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THE VINCENNES TRACE
circle about and return to the bank a few rods below their starting point. After several attempts had failed in this manner, Hubbard threw off his coat and called for "Old Charley," a large, steady-going horse which one of the settlers had brought along. Mounting Charley, he plunged into the water, the other horses being crowded in after him. In the swift current Charley became unmanageable, when Hubbard dismounted on the upper side, and ignoring the danger of being washed under the animal or struck by his feet and drowned, he seized the horse's mane with one hand, and swimming with the other, guided him to the opposite side.
Under such conditions of travel the march from Danville to Chicago consumed four days. A week or two of guard duty at Chicago were performed, when news was received that a treaty had been made with the Winnebago, and the Danville soldiers were free to return to their homes. Before their departure the grateful Chicagoans knocked in the heads of barrels of whisky, gin, and brandy, and all indulged in a glorious drinking bout. It is pleasant to be able to record that after the lapse of many years the men who took part in this campaign were rewarded for their services by the grant of eighty acres of bounty land. No textbook heralds to the rising generation the fame of Gurdon Hubbard's ride to Dan- ville to bring troops to the rescue of imperiled Chicago; yet in comparison with it the "midnight ride" of Paul Revere was merest child play.
A character whose memory is forever bound up with those of Hubbard and the Vincennes Trace is the gentle Indian maid, Watseka, who was born at the Indian village on the site of old Bunkum about the year 1810. Competition was fierce in the Indian trade, and the trader who could win the friendship of a chief enjoyed an advantage over his com- petitors which was not to be ignored. In savage, as in civilized life, the favor of royalty is best secured and cemented through marriage alliances. In accordance with the custom of the forest, therefore, Hubbard entered upon a marriage of con-
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CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
venience by taking to wife a relative of Tamin, chief of the Kankakee band of Potawatomi. It was Tamin's first desire that Hubbard should wed his own grown daughter, but for reasons which may easily be imagined the latter declined this alliance. Instead he indicated his willingness to marry Tamin's niece, Watseka, then a child of ten years of age. A pledge to do so was given, and when the girl had arrived at the age of fourteen or fifteen years she was brought to Hubbard by her mother and the marriage was consummated.
Over this union, as over the career of Watseka, hovers much of pathos and tragedy. Watseka was a beautiful and intel- ligent girl, and Hubbard in after years testified to the ideal character of his union with her. It lasted about two years, during which a daughter was born and died. The advancing tide of white settlement spelled the doom of the Indian trade, however, and Hubbard, who possessed abundant foresight and shrewdness, laid his plans for abandoning his calling. This would involve severing his connection with Watseka's tribe and taking up life anew in a civilized community. Under these circumstances the couple separated by mutual agreement, "in perfect friendship," according to Hubbard. His account of the transaction is entitled to entire credit, yet one can readily imagine that it was dictated more by the strong-willed husband, member of the dominant race and sex, than by the submissive wife. Viewed from any angle it was a hard situation, and Watseka doubtless had the sense to perceive that acquiescence in her husband's wishes was the only course open to her. After the separation from Hubbard she became the wife of Noel Levasseur, whom Hubbard left in charge of his post at Bunkum on his own withdrawal from the place. After living with Levasseur for almost a decade and bearing him several children, this union was also dissolved, apparently much as the one with Hubbard had been. Watseka, still a comparatively young woman, now joined the remnant of the tribe in Kansas, while Levasseur, like Hubbard, remained in Illinois and contracted a new
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THE VINCENNES TRACE
marriage alliance, this time with a white woman. About the year 1863 Watseka is said to have made the long journey, alone and on foot, from Kansas to her childhood home, there to brood over the graves of her people. Sad indeed must have been the pilgrimage, and poignant the memories awakened by the sight of the scenes of her childhood. Her memory is permanently preserved in the town of Watseka 1 which was named in her honor.
For many years the only market for the produce of the set- tlements on the Wabash was distant New Orleans and thither, on flat boats, nine-tenths of all the surplus produce of the state of Indiana prior to 1840 was carried. Early in the spring, in almost every inland community, the carpenters would begin the work of building the arks employed in the river trade. The finest poplars of the forest, some of them eighty feet or more in length, were selected for the gunwales. By the first of March the boats must be completed and at the landing in readiness to receive their cargo. The work of load- ing them was a stirring community event. The boat-owners watched the stage of the river, and at the proper time word was sent out over the neighborhood to bring in the produce for shipment. Men and women alike turned out, the latter to cook for the workers and to assist in wrapping and stow- ing away the goods. A barrel of whisky stood open on the bank with a dipper conveniently near for all to drink at
^An Indian tradition concerning the significance of Watseka's name is so charming as to deserve preservation. It relates that on one occasion an Iroquois war-party fell upon the Potawatomi village situated on the banks of the river a few miles below Watseka, and drove out the occupants with great slaughter. The fugitives were collected in the night- time some distance away, engaged in lamenting their disaster. A woman of great spirit and resolution urged the men to return and attack the Iroquois, who would be rioting in the spoils of victory and unexpectant of danger. Since the warriors refused to respond to the woman's urging she at length said she would raise a party of squaws and lead them to attack the Iroquois; and that since death or captivity on the morrow would be the lot of the women, they might as well perish in the attempt to regain their homes. The bravery of their wives and daughters inspired the warriors with renewed courage, and returning to the field of combat they surprised and utterly defeated the Iroquois.
The heroine who suggested and bore an active part in the enterprise was Watch-e-kee. To perpetuate the story of her heroism the warriors decreed in solemn council that after her death her name should be bestowed upon the most accomplished maiden of the tribe, and in this way be handed down through successive generations. The last person to bear the name — transformed by the whites into its present form of Watseka — was she who became the wife of Hubbard.
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CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
pleasure, and with much bustle and gayety the great work was accomplished.
An indication of the extent of this down-river traffic is afforded by the record that as early as the spring of 1826, 152 flat boats passed Vincennes loaded for New Orleans. A decade later it seems apparent that several hundred annually cleared from the Wabash. For the boatmen the journey was fraught with hardship and danger. River pirates infested the downward way, a particularly notable rendezvous of these bandits being the celebrated Cave-in Rock on the Ohio, near the mouth of the Wabash. The long and tedious return journey on foot led through a sparsely settled region where lurked highwaymen the recital of whose malodorous deeds causes the blood of the listener even yet to run cold with horror. Yet for many an inland dweller, like youthful Abraham Lincoln, the voyage was an enchanting adventure, affording a first glimpse of the great world which lay beyond his backwoods horizon.
The development of a market at Chicago in the early thirties afforded the dwellers on the Wabash a new outlet for their wares. The down-river trade did not cease, but youthful Chicago entered into vigorous competition with ancient New Orleans, and more and more the produce of the Wabash found its way over the Vincennes Trace to the lake- shore market in the huge prairie schooners of the Hoosiers, the direct offspring of the famous Conestoga wagons of Pennyslvania.
The extent of this traffic in the early years of Chicago's development seems at first sight astonishing. Few western communities produced any surplus for export in the earlier years of settlement, while most were compelled frequently to import even such staples as meat and flour. As lands were cleared and farms developed this situation tended to change, of course, but so great was the stream of migration into the country around Lake Michigan that for years there was a steady demand for the staple articles of consumption, which the Chicago market was depended upon to supply.
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THE VINCENNES TRACE
Since the Wabash country had a large annual surplus avail- able for export the Hoosiers turned, as a matter of course, to the Chicago market. Thither from a distance of 200 miles or more they drove their livestock on foot, and hauled their wheat and other produce in their huge, slow-moving, covered wagons. Their advent was a welcome event to all classes of people in the lake-shore city, not least to the small boys, whose characteristics were akin to those of the street urchin of all times. "The Wabash was our Egypt," wrote one of these in after years. "Not only did we derive from there our supplies of smoked hams, bacon, poultry, butter, lard, etc., but also our dried and green fruit which was brought to us principally in the old-fashioned, huge Pennsylvania mountain wagons, drawn by eight or ten yoke of oxen or five or six span of horses."
Between the Hoosier wagoners and the city urchins existed a deep-seated cause of strife, and the latter labored con- scientiously to transfer to their pockets a portion of the schooner's cargo of fruit. *Tt seemed cruelty to animals," continues the writer already quoted; "to stick a beautiful apple or luscious peach on a prong or dangle it by a string at the point of a canvas roof, as a sample of what the whole load was, and drive through a village with a big whip in the hands of a skilful Hoosier. Those Wabash fellows had never read 'lead us not into temptation' or they would not have done so. Of course they in turn deserved punishment for not reading the Lord's prayer. If they read it and deliberately disregarded it, they certainly should suffer. The justice- loving boys gaily assumed the responsibility of inflicting the penalty by filching the fruit."
The Hoosier in Chicago was as an alien in a foreign land. Lanky, good-natured, rustic, and uncouth, of lineage hailing from Kentucky, Virginia, or perchance the Carolinas, he was the standing butt of the witticisms of the sophisticated Yankees of the city. Lumbering along the street "with a tar bucket in one hand and a sheet of gingerbread in the other,"
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CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
inquiring of the passing citizen where an ox-yoke or a bucket of tar could be purchased, he was hkely to be directed to a dressmaking or millinery store; while it was a favorite pastime of the city auctioneer to inveigle a slow-witted Hoosier into bidding against himself for the possession of some such treasure as a red bandanna handkerchief.
At times, however, the Hoosier turned the tables on the more nimble-witted Yankee. A story of one such occasion has to do with the building of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago. The infant society had in some way secured possession of a lot at the corner of Lake and Clark streets, on which plans were made to erect a temple of worship. One morning before the work was actually begun, the members of the church awoke to find that some enterprising claim- jumper had erected during the night a small building on the front portion of the lot, and throughout the day the work of construction went steadily forward. But the children of light proved on this occasion more guileful than their de- spoilers. A member of the church sought out the lake-shore camp of the Hoosiers and held with a group of its denizens a mysterious conversation; its purpose became apparent on the following day, when the claim-jumpers awoke to find their new store building standing in the middle of Lake Street some dis- tance from the church lot on which they had erected it. In the darkness of night a party of Hoosiers had quietly yet ex- peditiously fastened their heavy chains to the sills of the building, and under the motive power of numerous yokes of oxen it had proceeded to its new resting place. Immediately after this event the members of the church society erected a new board fence around their recovered premises.
The dwellers by the lake-shore might gibe at him, yet the slow-going Hoosier brought to early Chicago almost its only touch of romantic association. The picture he implanted on the memory of one pioneer resident is thus expressed: "Their large covered wagons, curved at each end like a Roman galley, are seen in our streets no more. The loud crash of their
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THE VINCENNES TRACE
far-reaching whips is lost in the metropolitan din. The whoa-haw, gee as the patient oxen draw their heavy loads, is merged in the shriek of the engine that does their labor for them. The tinkling of the many bells, suspended from their horses' heads, is the charming music of the shadowy past. The fires where they bivouaced on Michigan Avenue have gone out forever. The scent of their fried bacon and corn dodgers is lost in the evil odors of a mighty city."
The Vincennes Trace was a great thoroughfare leading into Chicago from the south. Like the road from the east it received many tributaries in its northward course. The Indian trail, as we have seen, led almost due north through eastern Illinois, receiving at Bunkum a great affluent in the Potawatomi trail leading from Williamsport and the Wea towns. Illinois in 1834 laid out the state road from Vincennes to Chicago, following approximately the course of the Indian trail. Indiana as early as 1829 made provision for extending the state road from Indianapolis to Crawfordsville over the Potawatomi trail to the Illinois line. From Crawfordsville the road was to run by Williamsport and "from thence to the State line, in a direction to Chicago." Thus was established what has ever since been locally known as the ''Chicago Road." From Williamsport it ran northwestwardly past the site of the modern town of Boswell to Parish's Grove, and on to the state line near Raub. An extension of the road west of the line joined the Vincennes-Chicago State Road at Bunkum, the site of Hubbard's old trading post.
Although statistics are lacking, it seems not unlikely that the eastern affluent provided the major portion of the travel on the Vincennes Trace between Bunkum and Chicago. Over it, from an early date, a stream of emigrant wagons poured northward into the counties of northwestern Indiana and on to the still-vacant lands of Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa. There were whole months, says a local authority, when "at any time, on any day," prairie schooners might be seen travel- ing across the plains northward from Parish's Grove. "The
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CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
old trail suddenly assumed a national importance. From Ohio, Kentucky, and all Indiana south of the Wabash, a tide rolled on that ultimately filled all the groves and prairies north of the Wabash, and overflowed into the newer ter- ritories to the north and west."
To accommodate this travel, and to supply the wants of the farmers and wagoners who piloted their schooner-laden caravans to the Chicago market, taverns and camping places were established at intervals of a few miles all along the route. The wagoners commonly cared only for a camping place where they could tether and feed their animals. They carried their own provisions, frying their rasher of bacon, and boiling their coffee over the camp-fire around which they passed the night. In Chicago their common camping ground was the open stretch of dry land between State Street and the lake, shore. An observer records that on one occasion, from the roof of a warehouse at the corner of State and South Water streets he counted i6o Hoosier wagons assembled on this ground. Colorful, indeed, must have been the scene presented at such times by the fitful light of the many evening fires falling upon the white-topped wagons and the clumsy, con- tented oxen. The association of the Hoosier wagoners with this vicinity has been handed down to present-day Chicago in the name of Wabash Avenue, which, like State Street, takes its cognomen from the traffic of the old Vincennes Trace.
On his return journey the Hoosier carried back from Chicago such groceries and other "store goods" as the simple wants of his family, or the condition of his purse, might dictate. Frequently, too, he hauled a stock of goods for the village merchant, which had been purchased in New York or Boston and brought west to Chicago by way of the Erie Canal and the lakes. These things aside, the great staple of the return cargo was salt.
For a dozen years after the Vermilion salt works were opened by white settlers they continued to be a profitable source of business, and their product supplied the wants of the
70
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population over a wide extent of country. Prior to their opening, salt had been brought from Kentucky, chiefly by flat-boats up the Wabash and its tributaries, but the expense of this upstream transportation was so great that the use of the article was much restricted. Although loo gallons of water must be evaporated at the Vermilion works to make a bushel of salt, it could be produced much more cheaply than it could be transported from Kentucky. People came to the works from a long distance in wagons or on horseback to procure it, readily paying ^1.25 or $1.50 a bushel for it. Much of the out- put was transported down river, also, in flat-boats or pirogues to supply the lower country. The improvement of the Chicago harbor, however, dealt the industry a fatal blow. Salt from Syracuse could now be shipped by canal and lake-boat to Chicago, and hauled thence to the Wabash by the Hoosier wagoners more cheaply than it could be produced at Danville. Hence it came about that the Vermilion works fell into decay and the schooners returning from Chicago to the Wabash were commonly freighted with cargoes of salt.
71
CHAPTER IV
THE ROAD TO OTTAWA AND THE SOUTHWEST
OF all the thoroughfares out of Chicago the one of which the white man's knowledge was most ancient carried the heaviest volume of travel. The first white travelers in Illinois were the explorers, Jolliet and Marquette, who in the summer of 1673 came up the Illinois River and across the Chicago Portage to Lake Michigan. The ancient highway from Chicago to the southwest was also unique among early Chicago thoroughfares in being a combined land and water route, and its story can be adequately told only in connection with that of travel on the Illinois River and, later, on the lUinois and Michigan Canal.
Two factors combined to give this early Chicago highway the importance it enjoyed. In the first place it was the avenue of local communication between Chicago and the older-settled communities of central and southern Illinois. In addition to this it was a great national thoroughfare, since from about the year 1840, with the increase of commerce and travel on the Great Lakes, it became a favorite highway between the eastern states and the lower Mississippi Valley. An indication of this factor is seen in the large number of narratives of travel over this route which were published during the period reviewed by the present volume.
The conditions of travel between Chicago and southwestern points were determined by the geographical conditions affect- ing the Chicago Portage. The portage was, of course, the land transit that must be made in the period of travel by bark canoe and fur-trade bateau, between the Chicago River and the Illinois. At certain times, particularly in the spring when the rivers were flooded by the melting snow, boats could pass without interruption from Lake Michigan down the Des
72
THE ROAD TO OTTAWA AND THE SOUTHWEST
Plaines and the Illinois. But during much of the year they must be transported across the divide between the South Branch and the Des Plaines, or even to the mouth of the Vermilion, a distance of one hundred miles.
Coming to the period of modern settlement and travel, the utmost point to which steamboats could ascend the Illinois was Ottawa, at the mouth of the Fox River. During much of the season, however, they could ascend no farther than Peru, some fifteen miles below, and when the canal was constructed Peru became, much to the disappointment of speculators in Ottawa real estate, its terminus. Ottawa or Peru, therefore, according to the condition of navigation, was the point of transfer from river boat to overland vehicle in the stage coach era; and although many travelers ignored the river service altogether, going through to their destination by land, at Ottawa the thoroughfares between Chicago and the South- west centered.
One of the most interesting accounts of travel from Chicago down the Illinois in the primitive period is the narrative of Father St. Cosme, the Seminary priest, who came with a party of associates from Canada in the autumn of 1698 to spread the gospel among the tribes of the lower Mississippi. From Mackinac the party traveled in open canoes down the western shore of Lake Michigan. On nearing Chicago a sud- den gale on the lake compelled them to throw all their baggage overboard and draw the canoes ashore in haste to save them from destruction. Leaving their servants to look after the boats, the three priests proceeded on foot to the house of Father Pinet, who had established at Chicago the Mission of the Guardian Angel. His house was built "on the banks of the small river, having the lake on one side and a fine large prairie on the other." Nearby was a Miami village of over 150 cabins, and a league up the river was another almost as large. Here lived Chicago's earliest resident clergyman, except in winter when, the natives being absent on their annual hunt, he went to spend the season among the Illinois. The visitors
7a
CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
record that little impression was being made on the adults, "grown up and hardened in debauchery," but the young were being instructed and baptized, "so that when the old stock dies off there will be a new Christian people."
Perceiving that the waters were extremely low, the priests made a cache on the lake shore and buried most of their baggage, to be sent for in the spring. On October 30 they began making the portage to the Des Plaines, but when they had gotten half way across they discovered that a little boy who had been entrusted to their care had become lost, and several days were spent in searching for him.
The advancing season at length compelled them to give over the search, and resume their journey. With extreme toil the little party made its way down the Des Plaines, carrying baggage and boats much of the way. Arrived at the junction with the Kankakee, they were still compelled by the low state of the water to proceed on foot, while the men towed the boats along, as far as Starved Rock. As an offset to their labors, however, game of all kinds was abundant, so that there was no lack of fresh meat. A few miles below the mouth of the Des Plaines they came upon the buffalo and from this point to the Arkansas these beasts were encountered every day.
At Peoria the travelers caught up with Father Pinet and another Jesuit priest. Here, even at this early date, was evidently a considerable settlement of Frenchmen. These bushrangers had taken to themselves Indian wives, whom the Jesuits had converted to the faith, so that the visitors were much edified "by their modesty and by their assiduity in going several times a day to the chapel to pray."
In all, some five weeks were consumed in the journey from Chicago to the mouth of the Illinois. Many villages of natives were encountered, who with but a single exception welcomed the Frenchmen cordially. "One cannot fast in this river," writes the chronicler, "so abundant is it in game of all kinds, swans, geese and ducks. It is skirted by very fine woods,
74
THE ROAD TO OTTAWA AND THE SOUTHWEST
which are not very large, so that you sometimes meet fine prairies, where there are numbers of deer."
In the summer of 1821, a century and a quarter after St. Cosme's journey and on the eve of the white settlement of Illinois, Governor Lewis Cass came up the Illinois from St. Louis to negotiate at Chicago a treaty with the allied tribes of Chippewa, Ottawa and Potawatomi for the cession of several million acres of land in southern Michigan. The jour- nal kept by his secretary, Henry R. Schoolcraft, affords our last picture of the Illinois River route in its primitive condi- tion.
Between the mouth of the river and Peoria a few miserable huts of squatters were encountered, but from Peoria to Chi- cago there was at this date not a single white habitation. Peoria itself consisted of the ancient French village, begun in the days of La Salle. At Starved Rock the canoe was aban- doned, and the remainder of the journey to Chicago was made on horseback. For a guide the party enjoyed the services of Peerish, a half-breed Potawatomi chief, who had passed over the route an uncounted number of times and was perfectly familiar with every stage of it. In general the trail, which is described as **a deep-cut horse path," followed the course of the river, although seldom within sight of it, until the Des Plaines was forded above Joliet. From this point to their destination the travelers were accompanied by an ever-in- creasing cavalcade of natives, converging from all directions upon Chicago, where the grand pow-wow with the "Great Father" was to be held. Mounted on horses and apparelled in all their savage finery, with decorations of medals, silver bands, and feathers galore, the jingling of their ornaments combined with their spirited horsemanship to produce a spec- tacle as novel as it was exciting.
The fur traders, equipped only for water transportation, had necessarily clung to the river, but with the white settle- ment of Illinois and the change to transportation by land the need arose for another and more direct thoroughfare. Even
75
CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
before 1830 a few settlers had located in the valley of the Du Page near the northern border of modern Will County, the nucleus of the settlement being the beautiful grove just south of Plainfield which was long known as Walker's Grove. The Du Page settlement was included within the borders of the newly-created Cook County, and one of the first two highways established by the County Board in the summer of 1831 ran by way of modern Madison Street and Ogden Avenue to the house of Barney Lawton and from thence to James Walker's on the Du Page.
Lawton was a trader, who dealt particularly with the Pota- watomi. As such, it behooved him to locate on a highway of Indian travel, and so he had established himself at the point where an important Potawatomi trail from the southwest crossed the Des Plaines River. His location was twelve miles from Chicago on the site of modern Riverside. James Walker had located at Walker's Grove in 1828, being perhaps the first actual settler in Will County. From Chicago to Ottawa on the Illinois in almost a direct route ran the Potawatomi thoroughfare known to the early settlers as the "high prairie trail," crossing the Des Plaines at Lawton's and passing through Plainfield, Plattville, Lisbon and Holderman's Grove. The action taken by the Cook County Board in 1831, there- fore, was the first step in the transformation of the Indian trail into a white man's highway.
Over this route, on January i, 1834, was despatched the first stage coach which ever ran west out of Chicago. Its proprietor. Dr. John L. Temple, had secured the government contract for carrying the mail between Chicago and St. Louis, and for the service he had procured from New York an "elegant, thorough-brace post carriage," which had been shipped around the lakes from Buffalo before the close of navigation. The establishment of mail and stage-coach service between these points was a great event in the life of budding Chicago, one fairly comparable in importance and public interest to the building of a new railroad line at the present
76
THE ROAD TO OTTAWA AND THE SOUTHWEST
day, and the honor of driving the first stage was given to a rising young attorney of Chicago, John D. Caton, later and long famous as the chief justice of the Illinois Supreme Court.
How far this first coach actually ran is a matter of some doubt, but it is clear from the narrative of Charles Fenno Hoffman, who essayed to travel from Chicago to St. Louis two weeks later, that as yet stage-coach transportation be- tween the two points existed as an ideal rather than as a material achievement. On a bright winter morning he set out from Chicago in a "handsome four-horse coach;" but the weather was cold and the snow abundant, and a few miles of travel sufficed to demonstrate the unsuitableness of the post- coach as a conveyance under such conditions. At Lawton's where was the first stage-station on the route, the driver was persuaded by the passengers to abandon the coach for a rude but substantial sled, in the bottom of which a plentiful bed of hay was placed. Reclining on this, and wrapped in buffalo robes, the travelers continued the journey in comparative comfort. The wisdom of exchanging vehicles was made mani- fest when drifts were encountered in which the horses plunged to their cruppers, and through which the heavy-wheeled vehicle could not have been pulled at all.
Night brought them to Walker's Grove, where now is the town of Plainfield, but which then consisted of two or three log huts ''sheltered from the north wind under an island of tall timber." In one of these the party found shelter, the evening being passed before a huge open fire, whose flames shot up the enormous wooden chimney. In the morning, after a fruitless attempt by the driver to proceed with one team of horses a second span was attached, and the vehicle launched out upon the boundless expanse of prairie. The passengers, whose number was now reduced to two, beguiled the monotony of the long ride through the snow-covered waste by playing **prairie loo." This game consisted merely in betting upon the number of wild animals which either passen- ger should see on his side of the sleigh, a wolf or deer counting
77
CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
ten, a prairie chicken one. The one who first counted one hundred won the game, and enough wild animals were seen to permit the playing of several games before noon.
An all day's journey, in the course of which tremendous drifts of snow were encountered, through which the horses floundered with utmost difficulty, brought the party at sunset to Ottawa. On the following day, on stopping for dinner and a change of horses at a log house on the prairie, it was found that no arrangements had as yet been made for the public conveyance going farther. Accordingly Hoffman, who was traveling for pleasure, devoted a day to an excursion to Starved Rock. Meanwhile the mail contractor, arriving opportunely at the cabin, learned the plight of the passengers and at once made arrangements to send them forward the next morning. They accordingly proceeded in a four-horse wagon with a good driver. In crossing a deep frozen brook later in the day the hind wheels broke through the ice, and the horses gave such a frantic leap, in the effort to free themselves, that the double- tree bolt was broken. A substitute was tinkered up, but in crossing another stream one of the horses broke through the ice and the driver, attempting to jump, was immersed to his knees in the icy water. The nearest house was several miles away, and although the horses were driven furiously, before it could be reached the poor man's feet were almost frozen. Fortunately a physician chanced to be at this place, and with his intelligent care not only were the driver's feet saved, but he was able the next day to begin his return journey.
In addition to the route from Chicago to Ottawa by way of Plainfield, there were two other routes which attracted a heavy travel. One of these was identical with the Plainfield route as far as Brush Hill; from here it ran west through Naperville and thence southwestward through Oswego, York- ville, and Newark, following the general course of Fox River, until it regained the Plainfield road a few miles northeast of Ottawa. As far as Naperville this route was identical with the southern stage route from Chicago to Galena, opened in 1834.
78
THE ROAD TO OTTAWA AND THE SOUTHWEST
The junction of these two important thoroughfares made Naperville an important center of travel, and here in 1834 was built the Preemption House, one of the noted taverns of the day. The Preemption House is still conducted under its original name, being probably the oldest tavern in the state. Between the traffic to which it catered in the olden time, how- ever, and the travel of the present day a wide gulf lies. Over the great thoroughfares leading from Springfield in central Illinois and Galena the capital of the mining country, passed a constant stream of huge Pennsylvania wagons bearing the produce of the interior to Chicago. Naperville was a far- famed stopping place and the local historian records that dur- ing the season of travel more than fifty "prairie schooners" would anchor there every night. Whisky was twenty cents a gallon, and they had merry times. Far along the verge of the grove their shouts rent the air, and their campfires gleamed through the darkness till a late hour.
The other route between Chicago and Ottawa ran down the Des Plaines by way of Lockport and Joliet. The distance to Ottawa by this route was eighty-five miles, being several miles longer than the more direct roads by way of Plainfield and Naperville. Nevertheless much of the travel from Chicago to Ottawa and points beyond went by way of Joliet during certain years of the stage-coach era. The original line between the two points, established by Mr. Temple in 1834 followed the more direct route across country and this was the line taken by Frink and Walker's stages when they succeeded Temple in 1837. Just when the stage route by Joliet was es- tablished, or how long continued, it is difficult at this late day to say, but Mrs. Eliza Steele's charming narrative shows that it was in operation in the summer of 1840, and William Cullen Bryant followed it six years later.
Bryant was a traveler of much experience, having journ'^yed to all parts of the world, but he lacked the courage to encounter a second time the hazards of the stage ride between Chicago and Ottawa, and for the return journey he hired a private con-
79
CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
veyance. His complaints against the public stage were varied, and applying the pragmatic test of his own trial thereof, well- founded. The vehicle itself, "built after the fashion of the English post-coach, set high upon springs," he considered the most absurd kind of carriage that could be devised for the roads of Illinois. It seemed to be set high in the air in order that it might the more easily overturn, and this catastrophe, he avers, was narrowly escaped as many as a dozen times in the eighty-five mile journey.
Once, indeed, it was not escaped, for reasons which we may permit the famous author to state in his own words. The stage had left Chicago in the morning, and toward sunset was about to cross for the second or third time the channel of the canal below Mount Joliet. ''There had once been a bridge at the crossing place, but the water had risen in the canal, and the timbers and planks had floated away, leaving only the stones which formed its foundation. In attempting to ford the channel the blundering driver came too near the bridge, the coach wheels on one side rose upon the stones, and on the other sank deep into the mud, and we were overturned in an instant. The outside passengers were pitched head-foremost into the canal, and four of those within were lying under water. \Ye extricated ourselves as well as we could, the men waded out, the women were carried, and when we got on shore it was found that, although drenched with water and plastered with mud, nobody was either drowned or hurt.
"A farm wagon passing at the moment forded the canal without the least difficulty, and taking the female passengers, conveyed them to the next farmhouse, about a mile distant. We got out the baggage, which was completely soaked with water, set up the carriage on its wheels, in doing which we had to stand waist high in the mud and water, and reached the hospitable farmhouse about half past nine o'clock. Its owner was an emigrant from Kinderhook on the Hudson, who claimed to be a Dutchman and a Christian, and I have no reason to doubt that he was either. His kind family made us free of
80
THE ROAD TO OTTAWA AND THE SOUTHWEST
their house, and we passed the night in drying ourselves and getting our baggage ready to proceed the next day."
The second day of travel "over a specially rough road," brought the stage coach to Peru late in the night, the remain- der of which the travelers spent at an inn on the bank of the river, "listening to the mosquitoes." In the light of the writer's experience it is perhaps little to be wondered at that he declined for the future to venture within an Illinois stage coach or that he took pains solemnly to warn all future travelers between Chicago and Peru against crediting the "glozing tongue" of the agent, promising that the journey would be made in sixteen hours, since "double the number" would be nearer the truth.
An incident of the year 1837 which has long since been for- gotten pleasantly associates the Ottawa-Chicago road with America's greatest orator, Daniel Webster. Disappointed over the course of political events, Webster, toward the close of President Jackson's administration, planned to terminate his public career and begin life anew as a farmer on the prairies of Illinois. With this in view he purchased a thousand acres of land near La Salle and sent out his son, Fletcher, to begin the work of developing an estate. The project which would have transformed Massachusetts' most famous statesman into a Sucker farmer never materialized, but Webster's interest in the western country led him to embark in the spring of 1837 upon an extensive tour in the course of which he proceeded as far west as St. Louis, from which point he began the return journey by way of Chicago. Everywhere upon the tour the great statesman was received with transports of enthusiasm by the westerners, who assembled in vast throngs to greet him. The details of his journey from St. Louis to Chicago have unfortunately perished, but the traveler can hardly have failed to pay a visit to his incipient estate near La Salle, which he had named Salisbury in honor of his New Hampshire birth- place. He left St. Louis June 14, and reached Chicago at the close of the month. On his approach the joyful townsmen went
81
CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
out in a great cavalcade ten miles to the Des Plaines to escort him into the city. Before the Lake House a great crowd as- sembled to listen to an address on the issues of the day. Although the speech has not been preserved it undoubtedly dealt largely with the financial panic which had burst upon the country since Webster's departure from the East, and which was to bring woe and ruin to a large proportion of his audience. On July i Webster left Chicago by boat for Michi- gan City, where he took up the stage journey to Detroit.
The journal of a traveler is commonly a two-fold mirror, reflecting the writer's own character and standards of conduct, no less than it reveals those of the country described by him. Of the many travelers who essayed to describe the life of pioneer Illinois, none was more sprightly, or more tolerant of new manners and customs than Mrs. Eliza Steele, whose Summer Journey in the West was made in the year 1840. When, at Peoria, she listened to a sermon by a backwoods preacher who drew all his similes from rural scenes, she "re- joiced that the Lord had placed such a faithful servant in these fair prairies." Or when some marvelous yarn was spun for the particular delectation of strangers, she listened with good- natured incredulity, although even she succumbed to the fiction-weaving talent of one uncouth farm boy, who unfolded a tale of his wolf-hunting horse who indulged the habit of chasing these quadrupeds down on the prairie and slaying them *Vith one stroke of his hoof."
At Chicago Mrs. Steele and her husband had purchased pas- sage to Peoria, bed and board included, for the sum of eleven dollars each. The stage left Chicago at nine o'clock at night, and a twenty-four hour ride brought the travelers to Peru, where the steamboat Frontier was waiting to receive them. According to schedule they should have reached Peoria early in the morning, but a heavy fog held up the boat, and break- fast time found them many miles short of their destination. At Peoria the "Chicago line" terminated, and the travelers were delayed a day awaiting the arrival of a boat for St. Louis.
82
r Cawlsota to Ta*avclB«rs,
r^iR:AVELL!:RS de5i.isi.or to go west \rm I i.l '"Chicago bv slaao lo Peru, and ilieace to [.Poorinby the JVluil Boat, »re cauiioned ngam-t t)u; .!<^ct'!t u ed Jit \hc. "TRiiMONT House," in I Cilice; ;>. i.y fho uirent o « lino riinnins; to Peoria, [ liy L!!x;;i.'s Ferry, ulio ••?/i«re" lias his ofTicc as s;»ii ajrenr will by equivocation and indirect false- ! hood give iutormalion leading to the boliet' that I there is no regular tta^o direct to Peru, and nl • I though he v^ill porhap; avoid direct tidaehood.he 1 will «o manajie aa lo deceive ihoso who are uiu ; acqur.intci, and who make no far(her inquiries,) \ for the purpose ol gctiinsj tliem to travel in his I line round by iJixon to gel to Peoria. As such ! deceit was .■mcmpicd to be prartioed upon me by I said sgerit, iitid by and with the knowledge of I the Ck:rk or P.ar keeper of '.he Tremoxt Ilousii. | ' who knew I wished to go to Peru and Peoria.. | Idircc:, and of whom 1 niude inquiry fur the Peru | 1 oificc. I deem it a duty I ov/c to the Tru.eiliiig-j i i'ublic, to put them on their guard, as ihcy wiUJ ; be iniormcd at the •■Treniont Hout-"e," if iht y | ; make an inquiry for ih</ Porn oiT.ce, ihut t' is is ; the Btnge rdlicc, M;d that we do not kow run toi : Pern, owing lo the low s'ate of tl;c river, but go j sto Peoria. The oflice ol the mail lino to Peoria 1 |via Peru, I found near the cornei of Lake and I Clarke s:ree's, noiwithsta;uling I w:ia! informed iattiie " 'i'renionl IJou^e" thil "//m' was ''the" |office— and am informed thai the mail boat t; running between Peru and Pe.iria, has not loet la trip this season on uccouiU oi low vv.uer. '
1 W.S. BROWN, :
I Of Nfc>.v York. '
■ ^Chtcnr:o, Sept. 15,'4I/ d&.w3w }
\ 0° Advertiser a :id Krce Press at Detroit. Biif. .' ^faio Adreiti-cr and Grdena Gazette are request- • tcd to publish the above 3 weeks and eeod a mod- 1 terate bill to thi.ss office. ?
L ... - , J
COMPETITION IN TRANSPORTATION IN THE PIONEER ERA
A "caution" to travelers between Chicago and Peoria. Repro- duced, by courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society, from the Chicago American of September, 1841.
THE ROAD TO OTTAWA AND THE SOUTHWEST
It proved to be the steamer Home, evidently one of the better class river boats of the day; yet some of the things observed on it sound strange enough to modern ears.
On going aboard voyagers were presented a book in which to record their name, place of residence, destination and politics. Possibly this last detail was due to the intense public interest in the "hard cider" presidential campaign of 1840, which was then being waged. Turning from the register, the eye of the traveler fell upon the printed rules of conduct, framed in pink satin and hanging on the wall of the cabin. Among other things, gentlemen were forbidden going to the table in their shirt sleeves, or from defacing the furniture, with pencils or otherwise. "Otherwise" alluded, evidently, to the prevalent American custom of whittling. Moreover, no gentle- man was to lie down in his berth with his boots on, nor enter the ladies' cabin without permission from the lawful occupants of that retreat.
Indications that the travelers were nearing the Southland were found on the Home in the form of liquors on the table, gambling in the men's cabin, and a black chambermaid, who was a slave belonging to the captain. There was also a well- known "blackleg" on board, who traveled on the river boats during the summer, separating unwary passengers from their money by means of games of chance, and in winter retired to St. Louis or New Orleans to revel upon his dishonest gains. Among the passengers was an old woman who had removed from Kentucky to Illinois several years before. She was so rejoiced to see a slave again, that she quickly became intimate with the chambermaid, and the two would sit together on the deck, smoking and chatting by the hour.
Some statistics recorded by Mrs. Steele shed interesting light upon the traffic of the Illinois River at this early period. The captain of the Home stated that in the season of 1839 he had made fifty-eight trips between St. Louis and Peru and carried 10,000 passengers. In 1828, the first year for which a record was kept, there were nine arrivals and departures of
83
CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
Steamboats at Naples; in 1832, from March to June, there were 108; while at Beardstown there were 436 during the season of 1836. With the growth of the western country this traffic steadily increased, of course, until it was diverted from the river to the railroads.
The opening of the Illinois and Michigan Canal to traffic in the summer of 1848 worked a revolution in the travel and commerce of the Illinois River route. Until this time the entrepot of the latter had been St. Louis, but after the opening of the canal the trade of the Illinois River became tributary to Chicago. Wheat, corn, oats and sugar (the latter from New Orleans) were the chief commodities carried northward to Chicago, while merchandise from the eastern cities and lumber from the forests of Michigan and Wisconsin comprised the major portion of the cargoes carried in the opposite direc- tion. A steadily increasing proportion of the passenger traffic between the East and the West selected the all-water route from Buffalo to St. Louis by way of Chicago and the Illinois River. To accommodate this travel the canal was provided with packet boats, equipped to accommodate seventy-five or one hundred passengers. On the river, larger and faster boats were provided to transport the traffic between Peru and St. Louis. Until 1852 steamers in the Illinois River trade made weekly trips between these two points. Now, however, a new combination of rivermen reduced the schedule to five days, and from this circumstance the organization, known as the "Five Day Line," took its name. Among the boats in the service of the Five-Day Line might be found such colorful names as the Amazon^ the Cataract, the Belle Gould, the Garden City and the Prairie Bird. Gould, the historian of western steamboat travel, avers that these boats were among the finest and fastest of their day on western rivers. But their glory soon passed, for by the middle fifties the railroad paral- leled canal and river alike, and the through passenger travel promptly deserted the boats for the new and speedier mode of travel.
84
THE ROAD TO OTTAWA AND THE SOUTHWEST
The change in highway travel southwest of Chicago which the opening of the canal brought about was as far-reaching as the change on the river. Chicago had afforded the only market for the farmers of Grundy and La Salle, and other counties even more remote. Now, in effect, the farmer found the Chi- cago market suddenly brought to the nearest accessible point on the river or canal. Along this route warehouses were erected and a market for grain of all kinds was brought within easy reach, while goods and supplies of all sorts needed by the farmer were easily secured. For the farmers within reach of the canal or river, the tedious and expensive trips to the Chicago market, which they had long been compelled to make, became a thing of the past.
Passenger travel, also, between Ottawa and Chicago aban- doned the highways for the canal. The Red and Green packet lines which were quickly put in service were regarded as a marked improvement over the older method of land travel. "Traveling was placed among the luxuries," writes the his- torian of La Salle County. "The change from the ox team to the packets was as great to the early settlers as that from the boat to the parlor cars has been to later generations."
Canal-boat travel has long since been relegated to the limbo of the past, but we are fortunate in having a detailed descrip- tion by an intelligent English traveler who toured the United States in 1850, of the luxuries of packet-boat transportation on the Illinois and Michigan Canal. The vessel, the "Queen of the Prairies," was scheduled to make the journey to La Salle in twenty hours, but on this occasion it consumed twenty-five. The cabin of the boat was 50 feet long, 9 feet wide, and 7 high, and in this space ninety passengers were to live, eat and sleep. Their baggage was stored on the roof and covered with a can- vas for protection from the weather.
For the first few miles the "Queen of the Prairies" was towed, in company with three other canal boats, by a small steamer, but after passing the locks steam power gave place to horses, which traveled at the rate of five miles per hour.
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CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
Soon after leaving Chicago supper was served, "with the never- failing beef steak as tough as usual." The meal despatched, all the male passengers were ordered on deck while the cabin was transformed into a sleeping room. In less than half an hour they were permitted to return. In this brief space of time fifty berths had been erected, and beds for twenty spread on the floor. One end of the cabin had been curtained off for the ladies, and the sleeping places consisted of three tiers of shelves placed three feet apart along the entire length of both sides of the cabin.
The narrator, being a stranger, was politely offered first choice of berths, but "where all appeared equally uncomfort- able," he found the process of selection difficult. The other passengers made selection in the order of their ticket numbers, and all clambered into bed as best they could. With all windows tightly closed, the air in the cabin soon became in- tolerable. In those days "night air" was commonly believed to be highly unhealthy, and although our traveler awoke in the morning with a severe headache, the result of the nauseous atmosphere, he found consolation in the reflection that he had avoided contamination from breathing the "malarious" air of the marshland adjoining the canal.
Sliding from his shelf at early dawn, he washed in a water bucket on deck before his fellow-passengers had arisen. Shortly after breakfast the junction of the Des Plaines and the Kankakee was reached, and about nine o'clock the boat arrived at Morris. Continuing at this sedate rate it tied up at La Salle at six o'clock in the evening, twenty-five hours after the departure from Chicago. .
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CHAPTER V THE THOROUGHFARES TO THE LEAD MINES
THE development of the thoroughfares leading west- ward from Chicago was intimately associated with the mining districts of northwestern Illinois and south- western Wisconsin, whose chief commercial center was Galena, situated at the head of navigation on the Fever River. Galena is one of the oldest and most interesting cities in the upper Mississippi Valley. The existence of rich lead deposits in this vicinity was known to the French before the close of the seventeenth century. The map of Father Hennepin in 1687 shows a lead mine in the vicinity of Galena, while the journal of Henri Joutel, who spent the winter of 1686-87 at Starved Rock, records that travelers to the upper Mississippi country have found mines of "very good lead" there.
A generation later all France was convulsed by an orgy of mad speculation whose basis was the supposed mineral wealth of the upper Mississippi. This episode, known to history as the Mississippi Bubble, soon passed, and although the Indians seem to have worked the Illinois mines in their crude way from an early period, the earliest white miner of whom we have any considerable knowledge is the trader, Julien Dubuque. The red men were very jealous of white intrusion in the mines, but at a council with the Sauk and Foxes held at Prairie du Chien in 1788 Dubuque obtained permission to mine lead **tranquilly and without any prejudice to his labors." There- after for almost a quarter of a century, from his headquarters near the Iowa city which bears his name, he traded with the Indians of the adjoining region, buying their furs and lead and himself carrying on extensive mining operations. Dubuque enjoyed great favor with the natives and before his death in 1 8 10 he had accumulated a fortune from his combined trading and mining operations.
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CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
Although the Indians had thus admitted Dubuque and his French-Canadian employes to the mines, until well into the nineteenth century it was exceedingly dangerous for an American to establish himself in this region, and it is reported that several who essayed to do so paid with their lives for their temerity. Following the close of the War of 1812, how- ever, the Indians were forced by a treaty negotiated near St. Louis in August, 18 16, to assent to American occupation of a tract of mining country five leagues square on the eastern side of the Mississippi. Since the negotiators were somewhat hazy as to the situation of the mines, the more precise loca- tion of the reservation was to be left to designation later by the President of the United States. This same year George Davenport, an agent of the American Fur Company, opened a trading post near the mouth of the Fever River and from, here he shipped to St. Louis the first flat-boat cargo of ore which ever avowedly came from the Galena mines.
Davenport soon abandoned his location but in 1819 Jesse ShuU, who had been trading at the Dubuque mines, on receiving assurance that the Indians would not molest him, crossed over to Fever River. Several other Americans came in about the same time, and this year marks the permanent beginning of Galena, and of American occupation of the Illinois mines.
Since this work is not a history either of Galena or the lead mines it is sufficient for our purpose to note briefly some of the more outstanding facts in the development of the region. For several years following 18 19 the mines developed slowly. Soon, however, the pace accelerated, and the lead region became a center of attraction for enterprising spirits from all over the United States, and even from points across the sea. The mines of ancient Cornwall supplied their quota, and there are today in southwestern Wisconsin thousands of descendants of Cornishmen who found their way to the lead mines during the second quarter of the nineteenth century. From Missouri, Kentucky, and Tennessee a horde of squatters and prospectors
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THE THOROUGHFARES TO THE LEAD MINES
came up the Mississippi to Galena, while many from Indiana and southern Illinois came overland, following for the most part the old Indian trail from Peoria, which after 1825 was developed into a wagon road known as the Kellogg Trail.
Until 1827 the only government was that of the United States, administered by the superintendent of the lead mines. In this year, however, Jo Daviess County was organized, and about the same time the principal settlement on Fever River assumed the name of Galena, by which it has ever since been known. Here, on July 8, 1828, was begun the publication of the Miner s Journal, the first newspaper in the new Northwest. Not until more than five years later did Chicago's first newspaper issue from the press, and it was eight years after the birth of the Miner s Journal before a printing press was established at Milwaukee.
But the period of Galena's glory came with the decade beginning about the year 1845. "It was then [from 1845 to 1856] the most important commercial metropolis in the Northwest", writes General Augustus L. Chetlain in his Recollections of Seventy Years. "Its trade, which began in the later thirties, continued to increase steadily as the country developed until beyond the middle of the fifties .... Lines of fine steamboats plied between St. Louis and Galena, bring- ing in merchandise and general supplies and taking back lead and farming products. Then a line of first-class steamboats ran between Galena and St. Paul .... I have known in the busy season twelve to fifteen steamboats lying at the wharf at Galena at one time loading and unloading freight."
But the same factors which made possible the greatness of modern Milwaukee and Chicago sealed the doom of Galena's prosperity. Its able and aggressive bankers and merchants had developed a wide-ranging wholesale trade, but they paid practically no attention to the fostering of manufacturing estabhshments. When, in the middle fifties, two lines of railroad were pushed from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi, one from Milwaukee to Prairie du Chien, the other from
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CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
Chicago to Galena, the old line of commercial transit by way of the Mississippi, on which the prosperity of Galena had been built up, was cut across, and the trade of the upper Mississippi, instead of following the course of the river as of old, now found its way to the East over the new avenues of transit. The change proved fatal to Galena; her commercial dominance over the upper Mississippi swiftly departed, and the place fell back to the position it has ever since retained as a center of merely local retail trade.
Although the railroads spelled the doom of Galena, a stern economic contest for the control of the trade of the mines had long been waged between the eastern and southern routes to the seaboard. The New Orleans market, distant and difficult of access as it was, was at best a way-station between Galena and the northern seaboard cities which were the ultimate source of her commerce. There was, of course, an important alternative route by way of the Ohio River and thence across the mountains to Baltimore or Philadelphia, but this route involved a tedious and expensive land carriage. Accordingly, with the birth of Chicago and Milwaukee in the middle thirties, the commerce of the mines began to seek the new route to the East by way of the lakes and the Erie Canal. Although the river route maintained its dominance for a decade longer, more and more the lead of the mining country and, later, its livestock and farm produce found their way overland to Chicago or Milwaukee, the teamsters loading their wagons for the return journey with those articles of merchandise for which the interior cities and towns afforded a constant market.
We are here observing a contest whose importance far transcends any mere local interest, for on its outcome de- pended no less a result than the life of the American nation. If the Mississippi River had continued to offer to the states of the upper Mississippi Valley their sole outlet to the sea- board, their economic welfare and therewith their sympathies must have remained permanently bound up with that of the
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THE THOROUGHFARES TO THE LEAD MINES
slave States. The opening of new and better highways to the East in the decade immediately preceding i860 freed the Northwest from its dependence on the southern route to the sea and made possible the stand it took for the preservation of the Union in the years from 1861 to 1865.
The earliest impulse toward opening an overland highway between Chicago and Galena came, as might be expected, from the latter point. At the time the settlement of the mines was begun, the country between Galena and Chicago was an unexplored land, which only gradually became known to the white man. An indication of this is seen in the fact that when Major Long's exploring expedition came to Chicago in the summer of 1823 it was only after much delay and dif- ficulty that a guide could be procured to conduct the party to Prairie du Chien. Six years after this, in August, 1829, J. G. Soulard, a Galena business man, despatched a wagon laden with lead to Fort Dearborn. According to the Galena Advertiser of contemporary date this was the first wagon ever to pass between the Mississippi and Chicago. The route taken from the mines was to Ogee's Ferry on Rock River, eighty miles; thence an east course sixty miles to the mis- sionary establishment on the Fox River of the Illinois; and thence in a northeasterly course sixty miles to Chicago. Ogee's Ferry was on the site of modern Dixon, and the mis- sionary establishment referred to was the Methodist mission to the red men located near Plainfield, Illinois. The distance traveled by this route was 200 miles. The outward trip with 3000 pounds of lead consumed eleven days, while the return journey was made in eight days.
Whatever the returns of this particular venture may have been, the time had not yet arrived for any considerable traffic between Galena and the lakes. Not until a port should be developed at Chicago, and the machinery evolved for con- ducting regular commercial exchanges with the seaboard cities, could the trade of the interior find its way thither. These things were brought to pass as consequences of the
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CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
Black Hawk War of 1832. In its train followed not only the birth of modern Chicago, but with the dispossession of the Indians the settlers began moving into the country stretching westward to the Mississippi. In connection with this process the middle thirties witnessed the development of two great thoroughfares running west from Chicago with Galena as their common destination. For the remainder of this chapter it will be convenient to distinguish them as the Northern and Southern routes to Galena.
The first white men to locate in the beautiful valley of Rock River were attracted thither by the lure of profits to be gained from trading with the Indians. The earliest one of whom we have any considerable knowledge was Stephen Mack, a native of Vermont, who about the year 1822 found his way west to Green Bay. There he was told of the advantages for trade which the Rock River Country held out, and procuring an Indian pony he pushed through the wilderness to a Potawatomi village near the site of modern Grand De Tour. Here he located, married the daughter of the chief of the band, and for two or three years carried on trade with the natives, disposing of his furs at Chicago and procuring his supplies of merchandise there. Despite his matrimonial alliance with the band, however, some of its members con- ceived a dislike for the trader and laid a plot to kill him. Hononegah, his wife, learned of this, and apprising her husband of the impending danger, the pair sought refuge in the Winnebago village at Bird's Grove, where they received a hearty welcome and for some years made their home.
The story of Mack's relation with his dusky wife, Hononegah, affords a pleasing contrast to the usual sordid tale presented by such unions between the traders and the Indian women. She was devoted to her husband and family and he repaid her with a like degree of loyalty and affection. With the coming of white settlers, her position naturally became more difficult, but she won the friendship and respect of the newcomers and performed many acts of kindness to
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THE THOROUGHFARES TO THE LEAD MINES
such as were overtaken by sickness or other misfortune. At the same time she did not despise her own race, and while her Potawatomi relatives remained in Illinois they often came to visit her. To the end of her life she wore the native dress, in the contriving of which she exhibited both taste and skill. In 1840, to settle any question that might arise over the legality of his union with Hononegah, Mack remarried her in due form before a justice of the peace. She died in the summer of 1847, leaving besides her husband a large family of children.
In 1832 when the wily Black Hawk was bending every effort to induce the Winnebago to make common cause with him. Mack exerted all his influence to persuade the band with which he lived to reject the war belt. The situation became so tense in consequence of this course that Mack's life was endangered, and the story has come down that for a time he was forced to hide himself on an island in the river, now known as Webber's Island, where Hononegah supplied him with food until it was safe for him to venture abroad.
Mack foresaw that a speedy settlement of the Rock River country would follow upon the close of the war. Believing the junction of the Pecatonica River with the Rock offered an eligible site for a town, he located here and in 1835 laid out the village of Macktown. He had the town site platted and at one time valued a corner lot at |iooo. In 1838 he estab- lished a ferry and several years later replaced it with a bridge, the first to be built across Rock River in the state of Illinois. But with the progress of settlement travel was diverted to other lines and the village of Macktown dwindled until now nothing but the name is left.
The honor of founding a great city in the Rock River Valley was reserved to Germanicus Kent and Fletcher Blake, two Yankees like Mack, who in the early thirties had found their way west to Galena. In the summer of 1 834 these men explored the Rock River country and determined to locate on the present site of Rockford. It was then fondly believed that Rock River was destined to become a great highway of
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commerce, and the newcomers had fixed upon the point on the stream supposed to be equally distant from Galena and Chicago. Under this belief they gave to their settlement the name of Midway.
Meanwhile other settlements were being established, and in January, 1836, the state legislature authorized the laying out of a state road from Meacham's Grove in Cook County to Galena. The act directed the commissioners appointed for this purpose to "view, survey, and locate" the road in such fashion as to take in "Elgin on Fox River in Cook County, Belvidere on Squaw Prairie, in the county of La Salle, and Midway at the ford on Rock River, in the county of Jo Daviess." Soon after this, the name Midway gave place to Rockford, the derivation of which is sufficiently obvious. Meacham's Grove was modern Bloomingdale in Du Page County, to which point from Chicago there was already an established road. Thus was the course of the northern route to Galena officially determined, and the names of State Street in Belvidere and State Street in Rockford record the fact that they were formerly portions of the old state road.
The history of both northern and southern roads to Galena is interestingly associated with an important episode of the Black Hawk War. Andrew Jackson, who was president of the United States, was himself one of the staunchest Indian fighters the country has ever known. Although Jackson had once challenged General Scott to a duel, his impatience over the blundering misconduct of the war by the volunteer forces was such that he ordered Scott to proceed with a force of regulars to the scene of warfare and there assume charge of further operations. Late in June, therefore, he set out from Fortress Monroe with nine companies of regulars. The route taken was by way of Buffalo and thence around the lakes to Chicago, which was reached in a remarkably short space of time. En route, however, the Asiatic cholera, which was then sweeping over the country, made its appearance among Scott's soldiers. Scores died, and scores more deserted
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in wild fear of the dread disease. The contagion had not yet spent its force when the expedition reached Chicago in early July. Fort Dearborn was turned into a hospital and all thought of taking the field was given over for the present.
Within the next few days, ninety more soldiers were con- signed to shallow graves on the sandy lake shore. As soon as the epidemic began to abate its violence, General Scott moved out over the Ottawa Road to the site of modern Riverside, where a camp was established overlooking the Des Plaines, until the men should be once more in condition for active service. Meanwhile on June 29, Scott himself set out for the front, accompanied only by two or three staff officers and an escort of a dozen men, having left orders for bringing the main force on to Prairie du Chien as soon as possible. The route taken by Scott was the old Indian trail leading westward by way of Naperville to Dixon's Ferry on Rock River, from which place he followed the Kellogg Trail, now a well-estab- lished road, to Galena.
Less than a year after Scott's passage, the route he followed became a state road — the first from Chicago to Galena. Beginning at the corner of Lake and West Water streets, Chicago, the surveyors ran the line 102 miles to Dixon, from which point they followed the "general line of the present road" to Galena. The conception of road making then cur- rent is revealed incidentally in their report, which states that as far as Dixon the route is over "high and dry" prairie, and no expense is needed other than for bridging the streams. From Dixon to Galena the route is very hilly but a "tolerably good road," and "$500 will probably be sufficient for a good road the whole distance." Over this state road was started, in 1834, the first mail coach between Chicago and Galena, and thus the southern thoroughfare to Galena was established.
Some days after Scott's departure from Riverside, the camp on the Des Plaines was broken up and with a train of fifty wagons the army began its advance to the Mississippi. Instead of following in the footsteps of Scott, however, the
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army moved up the Des Plaines to Maywood. Here it turned westward, crossing the Fox River at a ford about three miles below the site of Elgin. From here the march was continued in a northwesterly direction across Kane and Boone counties to the Winnebago Indian village on the site of modern Beloit. At this place the army rested a week, during which time news was received of the destruction of Black Hawk's army in the battle of the Bad Axe. There being no occasion for further advance, the army now proceeded down Rock River to Rock Island, where conquerors and conquered alike assembled to fix upon terms of peace.
As far as Beloit the army had followed an ancient trail running from Chicago to the Winnebago village. The track made by the heavy wagons in passing over it was shortly turned into a highway by the incoming settlers, and was long known as the Army Trail. Hezekiah Duncklee, a settler who with two companions came west from his native New Hampshire in the autumn of 1833, relates that on crossing the Des Plaines at Maywood they came upon a "well traveled road" bearing westwardly across the prairie. After camping for the night in the midst of 500 Potawatomi who were assembling at Chicago for the great pow pow which resulted in the noted treaty of 1833, the settlers resumed their west- ward journey, following this road which was, of course, the Army Trail. From Maywood it passed into the southeast corner of modern Addison Township, Du Page County, a mile or so northeast of Elmhurst, crossed Salt Creek at the village of Addison, and passed on through Bloomingdale to the crossing of the Fox River south of Elgin. Toiling along their way in this narrow path "between two oceans of green," the settlers came upon the grave of one of Scott's soldiers, buried the year before. Farther west, at Salt Creek, were found the tent poles still standing as the army had left them.
Duncklee and his companions went no farther than Bloom- ingdale, which became, three years later, the starting point of the state road to Galena. The settlement on the site of
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THE THOROUGHFARES TO THE LEAD MINES
Elgin was made in the spring of 1835 by James and Hezekiah Gifford, two brothers from New York, who could not resist the combined attractions of good soil and potential water power which the place offered. Other settlers soon joined them and within a few months a number of cabins dotted the vicinity. The army trail, it will be remembered, crossed the Fox some three miles farther down the stream. The founders of the new settlement, therefore, staked out a road from Elgin east to Bloomingdale, to connect with the trail and afford an outlet to the Chicago market. The first im- provement of the new highway was made on July 4, 1836. On this day the assembled populace of Elgin cut down a large tree and with several yokes of oxen hauled it halfway to Meacham's, as Bloomingdale was then called. The citizens of Meacham's meanwhile were "improving" their half of the route in like fashion, and at the point where the two parties met the road was formally declared open, and all joined in a "grand Independence dinner" of corn bread, bacon, and cold coffee.
Thus usefully did the townsmen of Elgin observe the city's first Independence Day. As yet the place had no name, although some of the citizens had begun to call it "State Road" in the hope, apparently, that a state road would some time reach it. Chiefly to the enterprise of James Gifford was due the realization of the prophecy expressed in the name of the place. By 1836 settlers were pushing on west of Elgin, but as yet there was no road other than the army trail. Gifford desired to make Elgin a great point on the thoroughfare from Chicago to Galena, and he realized that positive effort was required to divert travel thither from the line of the army trail. To this end he undertook to mark out a road west of Elgin for the use of emigrants, and he persevered in his task until a route had been surveyed and blazed as far as Belvidere. When the commissioners came to lay out the state road from Bloomingdale to Galena they adopted, as far as Belvidere, the line which Gifford had blazed.
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Traffic over the Chicago-Galena highway increased, of course, with the increasing settlement of the interior until diverted to the railroad, which began pushing its way westward from Chicago in 1848. Precisely when stages were first run over the northern route is not entirely clear. The history of Elgin relates that Mrs. Giftord, who in 1835 had ridiculed her husband's idea that he would live to see stage coaches running to the place, in 1837 could see from her cabin door not one, but two, daily stages enter the village with "horns blowing the announcement of their arrival."
Probably the first stage-coach to reach Rockford was on January i, 1838, for on that date not only the villagers but large numbers from the surrounding country assembled to witness the arrival of the stage. The proprietors of the line were the well-known firm of Frink and Walker, with head- quarters at Chicago. At first their stage ran only as far as Rockford, and the schedule time for the journey from Chicago was twenty-four hours. From Rockford on to Galena the stage was conducted for a time by John D. Winters, whose home was at Elizabeth in Jo Daviess County. Probably from this circumstance, the stage route at first passed through Eliza- beth. Subsequently it followed the more direct route by way of Freeport, the stopping-place between Freeport and Rock- ford being at Twelve-Mile Grove.
Travel conditions over the Galena highway did not differ materially from those of other western roads in the stage-coach period. There was no bridge at Elgin until 1837, and none at Rockford until the summer of 1845. At Rockford a ferry was maintained prior to the building of the bridge, but at Elgin travelers crossed the raging Fox as best they could. In this connection an interesting story of pioneer ingenuity is recorded. A number of teamsters had congregated, unable to cross the river, which was filled with blocks of floating ice. Instead of tamely waiting upon the processes of nature, they proceeded to throw quantities of straw from cake to cake and then pour water over the straw. This froze, the ice became one solid
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mass, and over the bridge thus contrived the teamsters passed triumphantly.
Mrs. Oscar Taylor, who as a young woman traveled over the Galena road from Chicago to Freeport in the autumn of 1 839, has left a sprightly narrative of this, her first journey in Illinois. The stage, which she describes as a "commodious affair," left Chicago at two o'clock in the morning, having as passengers, aside from Mrs. Taylor, ten young men, all of whom were coming west to seek their fortunes. In the darkness of the first few hours nothing could be seen of the country, but the continued splashing caused by the four horses gave the im- pression of low land nearly under water. "At daybreak," continues Mrs. Taylor, "we reached a country tavern, where we breakfasted on Rio coffee, fried fat pork, potatoes boiled with their jackets on, with hot saleratus biscuits, the color and odor of which warned us what to expect in flavor. But the gay spirits and vigorous appetites of my traveling companions added piquant sauce to the emigrant fare.
"On emerging from the stuffy little breakfast room into the fresh air of the morning, there before me lay the great prairies of the West, seen for the first time in the full splendor of a magnificent sunrise, the seas of green stretching unbounded in every direction, the vast expanse unbroken by any sign of habitation.
"The curtains of our stage were rolled up (and) as we drove on through the beautiful morning I was entranced. I had heard of the western prairies, I had imagined them, I had read of them with Cooper, my father had written of them, but I had not formed the slightest conception of the actual vision of this country, which was then almost as it had been a century before, when the red men roamed over it at will. Gradually the flat levels changed to a more billowy surface, and small groves of oak appeared. Sometimes we passed through what seemed veritable gardens, so gorgeous were the fields of yellow golden-rod, broken by the deep purple and snowy white of the wild aster. And the gentians, blue and purple, fringed and
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closed, bloomed in bewildering beauty, while the great cloud shadows floating across the scene continually altered the face of the landscape. I looked to see deer or wolf, or some other wild creature start up as we passed, but in that I was dis- appointed.
*'Our late lunch had been a repetition of breakfast and I, tired and hungry, fell asleep as darkness gathered, to be aroused by a shout from the driver, *Rockford! Rockford! Here you can get a good Yankee supper.' Most welcome news! It wasn't a Yankee supper after all, but a most delicious supper of native prairie chicken, cooked, however, with the skill of the traditional eastern housewife. At midnight we left Rock- ford, crossing the river by ferry, to me a frightful experience in the black darkness. Hardly were we on solid earth before the driver announced that the passengers must leave the stage and climb the sand bank just ahead, as the horses could not pull the load up the bank. I think I should have been buried in the sand had not one of the young men gallantly assisted me.
The story of the southern road to Galena is closely bound up with the history of Kellogg's Trail. Prior to 1825 residents of lower Illinois who desired to visit the lead mines had followed a circuitous route to the Mississippi and thence along its banks to Galena. In the spring of 1825 Oliver W. Kellogg of Peoria set out for Galena with a team and wagon. Instead of pursuing the usual route he followed an ancient Indian trail which led from the mines to Fort Clark. Blazing the way as he went, Kellogg crossed Rock River about three miles east of Dixon and passed through the prairie lying between Polo and Mount Morris, touching the western part of West Grove and continuing northwestwardly to Galena. Other travelers to the mines quickly followed the path which Kellogg had blazed, and thus the famous Kellogg Trail came into existence.
Although Kellogg had opened a fairly direct route from Peoria to Galena it was soon perceived that it bore too far to the east. This defect was corrected by John Boles, who came
THE THOROUGHFARES TO THE LEAD MINES
over the trail in the spring of 1826. Leaving the beaten track some distance south of Rock River, he crossed the river just above the present Illinois Central Railroad bridge at Dixon, passed northward about a mile east of Polo, and through White Oak Grove, about a half mile west of Foreston, and Crane's Grove to Galena. This rectification of Kellogg's track was adopted by others, and the site of Dixon at once sprang into importance.
This importance was primarily due to the fact that the heavy traffic which quickly developed over the Kellogg Trail must here find passage over a broad, deep river. The Winne- bago Indians who dwelt hereabout were the original ferrymen. For a suitable consideration they were willing to put travelers across the river, although their equipment for doing so was somewhat meager. Two canoes placed side by side were made to do duty for a ferry boat, the two wheels of one side of the wagon being placed in one canoe and the other two in the other. The teamster's horses or oxen were made to swim the stream.
But the Indians were frequently absent, or indisposed to labor, and an enterprising resident of Peoria concluded to establish a regular ferry at Dixon. To this end he sent up a man to erect a small shanty on the bank, and following him a carpenter to build the boat. The red men, however, who regarded the ferry privilege as their own peculiar monopoly, watched the proceedings with sullen gaze; when the boat was about half completed they set it on fire and urgently advised the workmen to betake themselves to Peoria.
The advice was acted upon without delay, and for a year or two longer the natives continued to enjoy their monopoly. In 1828, however, a half-breed Frenchman, Joe Ogee, who had long associated with the Indians, and had taken to wife the half-breed daughter of the trader Lasaliere, started a ferry at Dixon, and him the natives permitted to continue unmolested. Considered as a business man Ogee was not a conspicuous success. His ferry boat was propelled by poles, the pass-
CHICAGO'S HIGHWAYS — OLD AND NEW
engers generally taking poles and assisting in the work. It started from the south bank of the river and landed wherever luck and the strength of the current might combine to dictate. Ogee, too, was addicted to liquor, and his attendance upon the ferry, like that of the red man before him, was some- what irregular.
This situation was doubtless partly responsible for bringing to the place in 1830 John Dixon, one of the most remarkable men of his day in Illinois. Dixon was a native of New York who in 1805 had located in New York City as a merchant