Stagecoach Travel in Early Chicago and Illinois.

The counterpart of the twentieth-century passenger train was the Stagecoach, which might vary in character from the ordinary farmer's wagon impressed into service for the conveyance of travelers to the ornate and aristocratic Concord coach.

Note the shock-absorbing axles on this late-model, custom-built Concord stagecoach replica.

Concord Stagecoach wheels were usually 40 inches in the front and 60 inches in the rear.

Concord Stagecoach - The leading horses are known as the lead horses. The wheel horses or wheelers are the back pair nearest the coach's wheels. The number of horses, usually four or six, could be even more, and two horses alone would soon tire.

Concord Stagecoach - The back wheels have brake blocks acting on the iron tires. The driver controls them with a foot lever to his right at the side of his footboard.

Concord Stagecoach was a high-end, expensive vehicle; the cost was justified by its long service life.

The Concord is the pinnacle achievement in horse-drawn passenger vehicles in America. Toward the middle of the nineteenth century, the superiority of steam over horses as a motive power was demonstrated. Early motorcars were modeled from the vehicle which they were about to replace. 

A Conestoga wagon or prairie schooner (a covered wagon).

A Conestoga custom-built replica wagon.

The story of the development of the Concord coach is one of the most satisfactory in the annals of the American industry. In August of 1813, Lewis Downing, a young artisan from Lexington, Massachusetts, through the columns of the weekly Concord Patriot, "respectfully" informed the townsmen that he had opened a wheelwright's shop in Concord where he flattered himself that "by strict and constant attention to business" he would "merit the patronage of the public." For a dozen years, the business progressed in a small way until, in 1826, the industrious proprietor decided to add coachbuilding.

To this end, he engaged J.S. Abbott, a young artisan of Salem, to come to Concord and build three coach bodies for him, the rest of the work being done by Downing's own workmen. In July 1827, the first coach was completed and sold to a local stage driver. It was the pioneer of a long and famous line, for Concord coaches found their way to the ends of the earth within the next generation. The Concord coach became a familiar sight in California, Peru, and Australia—wherever advancing civilization pushed its way. Before the advance of railroad construction, the famous vehicle was forced to retire to ever more remote and inaccessible regions until, at length, the advent of the gas-propelled wagon wrought its final doom. Detroit replaced Concord as the center for the production of passenger highway vehicles. Only in an occasional museum can a time-period specimen of the old-time coach be found. 

Concord Stagecoach Interior

In its final form, which reached about 1830, the Concord coach represented the product of a seventy-five-year period of evolution. The body was oval but flattened on top to secure baggage. Within were three cross seats, each designed to hold three passengers. Those in the front seat faced the rear, the others toward the front of the coach. The driver sat on an elevated seat in front of the covered body, while at the rear was a triangular, leather-covered space known as the "boot," wherein such baggage was stowed that did not ride on top.

Concord Stagecoach Interior

The enclosed body was supported by heavy "thorough braces," made of numerous strips of leather riveted together. By this device, instead of the constant bumping which had attended the traveler in the older stage wagon, the passenger was subjected to a succession of oscillations whose violence was directly proportional to the road's roughness.

The coach's body was brightly painted in red, green, yellow, or blue shades, and the panels were decorated with paintings of landscapes or of noted historical characters.

Paintings on the side of Concord stagecoach.

Mural painted on a Concord stagecoach door.

The interiors, too, were attractively painted and upholstered, while the individual coach bore the name of some noted statesman or other characters. With the coming of the railroads, this custom was transferred to the early locomotives, and it survives today in the naming of Pullman cars. The stage driver was a man of consequence in the community, and he never omitted an opportunity to impress this fact upon all with whom he came in contact. He carried a trumpet which he loudly blew to announce the Stage's arrival at a tavern, and both arrival and departure were made with his four-horse team lashed into a run. 

Such was the Concord stage at its best. The impression it made on the community is well outlined in the following narration by a western man of particular recollections of his boyhood:

"He was fresh from a small western farm and had often been to the village nearby, and with wide-open eyes and bated breath had seen the great old Concord stage come into town with four prancing horses and was nearly blinded in looking upon the great man who held the lines and the beautiful long whip—the observed of all, the glass of fashion and the mold of form. He had at one time the temerity to clamber up and look into the coach, with its brass furnishing and leather. He had seen the stage tavern, the only one in the place, and envied the royal high-life of its borders—the village lawyer and doctor and hatter, and a merchant, and others who worked at their tools in the little town. All these were favored, even great, people, but their lights paled when the whip stepped forth with that peculiar swagger, now a lost art to the world, of a stage driver, chewing tobacco, and who always wore a broad leather belt instead of suspenders. He was the man of authority with whom even the schoolmaster would esteem it a most distinguishing honor to have been found in the company or in confidential conversation."

It was necessary to be organized to attend to such common but necessary details as arranging stage schedules and routes and providing the requisite supplies of horses, hay, grain, equipment of all kinds, repair shops, and even the monthly payment of the autocratic drivers.

In the early settlement period in Illinois, stage lines were few in number, and the work of administering them was correspondingly simple. With the increase in travel, however, the demand for more capital to supply the public needs and, therefore, a more elaborate business organization.

Towering above all competitors in the Chicago area was Frink, Walker & Co., which for years enjoyed a practical monopoly of passenger transportation over a large portion of the Mid-West. John Frink, Jr., who was the dominant figure in the partnership, was a veritable Connecticut Yankee, born in Ashford in 1797.

Early in life, he entered the stage business, one of his first ventures being a line between Boston and Albany. A branch line to New York City was soon added, growing at length into a line from New York to Montreal.

July 14, 1830

On the 18th of July, 1830, the large barn, owned by Mr. John Frink Jr., stage proprietor of Stockbridge, Massachusetts took fire, and was consumed, with all its contents including a Stage Sleigh -- Seventeen horses were burnt up!  The loss sustained by Mr. Frink is estimated at $5,000. No insurance.

Since the above was in type, we have learned that the inhabitants of Stockbridge, Lee, etc., have generously presented him the sum of nearly $3,000.                                                 —Pittsfield Argus Newspaper. (American Whig, August 11, 1830.)

Frink was an experienced man of affairs when in 1832, he migrated to Chicago. Here he purchased the stage line running to Ottawa. From this beginning, his operation extended until it covered most of the state of Illinois. There were widespread ramifications in all of Illinois' neighboring states. The traveler who embarked upon an extended journey by Stage committed himself to a venture whose outcome no man could foresee.

Frink set up the first successful stage line out of Chicago in 1832 with partner Charles K. Bingham. The first Frink, Bingham & Co. Stagecoach ventured west of Chicago to Fullersburg [1] (Oak Brook), 15 miles from Chicago, and followed the Indian Boundary Line.

NOTE: Indian Boundary Park in Chicago was named so because the park is actually on the Indian boundary.

Frink joined forces with Martin O. Walker and Walker's brother, Curan (a silent partner), on June 1, 1840. Frink provided the political, operational, and sales know-how, while Martin provided business experience and funding along with Curan.

An inseparable accompaniment of the stage business in this period was the transportation of the U.S. mail. Indeed, the United States Post Office Department commonly pioneered the way for the stage lines of the West by establishing post roads through newly settled regions and letting contracts for the carrying of the mail over them.

The substantial aid that this subsidy provided was frequently indispensable, particularly in the earlier period of settlement, to the establishment and maintenance of stage routes, and the bidder who gained the coveted contract thereby attained a position that enabled him to bid defiance to all competitors, at least as far as the route in question was concerned.

Frink, Walker & Co., General Stage Office, two doors west, on the south side of Lake Street, off the corner of Dearborn Street, Chicago, Illinois. (1844)

The firm of Frink, Walker & Co. proved singularly successful in obtaining mail contracts from the government. In the absence of other records, the data concerning these now show the best indication of its activities.

In 1844, Frink and Walker had, on the road between Chicago and Peru, 160 horses, making 40 teams, with extras always in readiness to forward any number of passengers that may arrive.

In June of 1850, when the firm was probably near the height of its business development, a Washington correspondent reported to his St. Louis paper that its mail contracts in Illinois aggregated $78,000 a year. Besides these, it had contracts in the states of Indiana, Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Michigan amounting to $50,000; plus, the total sum of those contracts was shortly increased to $150,000 annually. Someone connected with the firm must have possessed the political talent to obtain, year after year, extensive contracts.

Frink, Walker & Co., Offices, 1845.

Apparently, this man was the senior partner, John Frink Jr., because his biographer stated that he spent much of his time in Washington. Because so much influence was exerted, competitors for the contracts were usually unsuccessful. The firm of Frink, Walker & Co. success, particularly on a widespread scale, stirs up envious comments and contemporary newspaper criticism of the "huge monopoly," which, having broken down all opposition, proceeded to do as it pleased, sounds curiously modern to the twenty-first-century reader. The scanty records available concerning Frink inspire the reader with a desire to know more about him. An aggressive temperament with no opposition in business and competitors were ruthlessly driven from the field. The story of one famous contest of this kind in the middle eighteen-forties carried down to us in the memory of a pioneer settler is worth retelling here.

The contest grew because, at least, Frink had once encountered a better politician than himself. When the granting of the mail contracts for the ensuing year was announced, it appeared that all the contracts which Frink, Walker & Co. had previously enjoyed had been captured by an outsider. General Hinton of the Ohio Stage Company. The partners recognized, of course, that without the contracts, the operation of their stage lines would be a loss, and Walker, beset with anxiety over the situation, urged upon Frink that they should endeavor to arrange with Hinton for some division of the field, or failing this, should sell off their property and retire from business.

Frink, however, rejected with disdain this proposal, declaring that no interloper should take over his territory without a fight and that he would show the authorities at Washington that if the mails were to be carried at all, it would be by the firm of Frink, Walker & Co. In due time General Hinton appeared on the scene with a caravan of coaches and horses and began operations. The public, however, sympathized with the "old line," and the Hinton stages were not overburdened with business. To attract patronage, therefore, the proprietor made a cut in fares. This was promptly countered by Frink, Walker & Co., making a still lower cut, which Hinton followed in turn until travel over the rival lines became practically free, with meals thrown in for good measure. 

The rival coaches traveled the same route at the same hours, and races were frequent. In those days, wealthy southern planters often came north by riverboat to Cairo or St. Louis, where they took the Stage to Chicago, proceeding around the lakes to some eastern resort. It need scarcely be said that they immensely enjoyed these impromptu races over the prairies, urging on their own driver by liberal promises of money and liquor and hurling wild jeers at the passengers and driver of the rival coach. The spirit of Frink rose to the combat, and orders were given to his drivers never to permit a Hinton coach to pass them. When, as on occasion happened, a Frink & Walker coach came in last, the unfortunate driver was soundly berated for his failure to observe the order. If he ventured the excuse that he did not wish to kill his horses, Frink would retort with an oath, "I'll find horses. I want you to find whips." 

Both lines maintained headquarters, veterinary stables, and hospitals in Chicago, and Frink, whose home was in Peoria, took his station to direct operations. Of course, horses were frequently disabled, and those of the Hinton line were brought into Chicago daily for treatment. Frink, however, required that his disabled horses should be brought to the hospital only by night. When questioned as to why his line had no disabled animals while the opposition had so many, he explained that this difference was due to the superiority of the drivers. They knew the country, and when a coach was mired in a slough, they knew how to extricate it without injuring their animals by quiet command. On the contrary, the "green fellows from Ohio," in a similar dilemma, would begin to swear and lash the horses, causing one to spring forward while the others hung back, and thus the driver came out with an injured animal.

The war was still at its height, with people traveling over the country cheaper than they could live at home, when Frink, by quiet inquiries in Chicago and St. Louis, learned that Hinton had been borrowing considerable money from the banks on notes that were about to mature. Fortified with this information, he went grimly on with the war until Hinton, at length, sent an agent with an offer of compromise. Walker was eager to settle the difficulty on any terms obtainable, but Frink swore that Hinton had begun the war and must end it at his own cost; if he wanted Frink and Walker out of the way, he must pay them a reasonable price to withdraw.

After some days of negotiation, Hinton agreed to buy the property of the rival firm at an extravagant valuation, paying a small sum in cash and giving a series of long-time notes for the remainder of the debt. When the parties met with their lawyers to conclude the transaction, Frink inquired who would be the backer of Hinton's notes. Hinton answered that nothing had been said about a backer and asked whom Frink wanted. "I want Billy Neeley of the Ohio Stage Company," was the answer. "Why," replied Hinton, "Mr. Neeley wouldn't be my backer. We quarreled before I left Ohio, or you wouldn't have had me here in Illinois."

"By God, that Is just what I wanted to know, and I will run you to hell," retorted Frink, abruptly terminating the Interview and striding out of the office. Within a short period, Hinton's notes matured. His property was attached, unable to meet them; the unfortunate proprietor, seeing all was lost, fled to Texas, a favorite resort of adventurers and outlaws from the states, and his stage line was ruined. For weeks the mail went undelivered until the contracts were relet to the old firm of Frink, Walker & Co.

The first stage line to enter Chicago was from Detroit In 1833. The following winter Dr. Temple opened the line to St. Louis, and after that, the development of stage lines In the region tributary to Chicago kept pace with the growth of the settlement. The development In the first dozen years is found In the business directory of 1846, when Chicago had already become the wonder city of the West, with a population of over 14,000. Four steamboats arrived and departed daily during the navigation season, carrying an average of 430 passengers, the estimated total for the season being 92,020. Eight arrivals and stages depart daily, with an average number of fifteen passengers, amounting to 120 daily and 43,800 for the entire year.

Pursuing the inquiry further, we find a daily stage service between Chicago and Peoria. Tri-weekly stages ran to Galena through Dixon and over the northern route through Freeport and Rockford. Between Chicago and Detroit and Chicago and Milwaukee, the stage service was modified by the existence of water transportation. In the season of open navigation, stages ran tri-weekly to Milwaukee; when navigation closed, a daily schedule was established. By 1846 the Michigan Central Railroad was In operation as far as Kalamazoo and the Michigan Southern as far as Hillsdale. Between Chicago and these points, a daily stage service was maintained during the season, closed to navigation. In summer, a steamboat ran daily between Chicago and St. Joseph, from which point travelers proceeded by Stage to Kalamazoo.

On the more important lines, the old-time Stage ran night and day like the steam train. This involved, of course, the maintenance of relay stations at intervals of twelve or fifteen miles where fresh horses were in readiness to take the place of the jaded arrivals and inns for the accommodation of the passengers. The source already alluded to exciting information concerning the stage schedules and fare rates. The journey to Peoria, 175 miles, might be made in two days, the cost to the traveler being $10 in winter and $8 in summer. The distance to Galena by the northern route was 160 miles, and by the southern 170; in both cases, the fare was $8, and the time consumed two days. From Chicago to Milwaukee, a distance of 97 miles, the traveler might ride in summer for $3, while in winter, he paid $5. The trip required 1½ days, the Stage stopping overnight at Kenosha. In general, it may be said that stage passenger fares ran from five to six cents per mile. The unusually low summer rate between Chicago and Milwaukee was due to the existence of water transportation, commonly preferred by travelers to Stagecoach. In some sections of the country, stage fares were regulated by the passenger's size, the assumption being that the average traveler should weigh 100 pounds; one who weighed 200, therefore, found himself under the necessity of paying a double fare. If this custom ever prevailed in the Chicago area, the records are silent concerning it. 

The traveler who embarked upon an extended journey by Stage committed himself to a venture whose outcome no man could foresee. To be sure, the stage company had a schedule for the trip, but the factors making for uncertainty were numerous, and between schedule and performance, there was frequently a discrepancy. Frequently the stage company was not blamed for its failure to convey the traveler comfortably and promptly to his appointed destination. The ability to do this depended chiefly on the road condition, which, in turn, was governed by the weather, for which no one could be held responsible. But the discomforts, not to say the hazards of travel, were often due in considerable measure to failure on the part of the stage company to provide adequate equipment or even to an evident absence of desire to fulfill the obligations it had assumed.

Illustrative of these conditions is the experience of Moses Strong, who essayed a journey from Milwaukee to Mineral Point in May of 1845. Milwaukee was the metropolis of Wisconsin, and the route, led by Madison, the capital city, was one of the most essential stage lines In the Territory. Strong was one of its leading citizens, lawyer, and legislator combined; accompanying him as far as Madison were his sister-in-law, Mrs. Temple, and her daughter. When the driver called at the Milwaukee House for the party at early dawn, they found the vehicle, by courtesy called a "stage wagon," was nothing but a rickety lumber wagon with some canvas drawn over the top. Eight or nine miles out, a rear wheel collapsed, and the occupants were deposited "bag and baggage" In the mud. All plodded forward on foot for half a mile, where the driver succeeded after two hours' delay in procuring a typical lumber wagon without springs, in which they were jolted to Troy, a distance of twenty-five or thirty miles. Here they were placed In a coach with a kicking, fractious horse, which the driver, much to the relief of his apprehensive passengers, succeeded in piloting to Richmond without further mishap.

Here, however, their troubles commenced in earnest. It was already dark, with a cloudy sky, and before them lay twenty miles of the open prairie where the Stage had often become lost on previous night journeys. Notwithstanding the urgings of the passengers that he light his lamps, the driver set forth without doing so (they learned that he lacked the proper supplies) and, despite momentary peril, succeeded in advancing several miles. Then he ran the Stage off the side of a bridge, tipping it entirely over and bruising and injuring the occupants. They succeeded in righting the vehicle and again got in (Mrs. Temple first walked half a mile). Within a mile, it tipped over again, this time on the other side, injuring the occupants more severely than before. They are now determined to ride no more till daylight and, walking on in much pain, came at length to a farmhouse where they found shelter until morning when they were taken on to Janesville, Wisconsin, by a stage that came along. 

The Stage continued to Madison, but Strong and his companions were compelled to stay at Janesville to recover from their bruises. The next day Strong procured an open buggy to take them to Madison. Although it rained all day and the women had only their umbrellas for protection, they preferred this mode of conveyance to entrust themselves again to the mercies of the Stagecoach.

Leaving his companions at Madison, Strong took the Stage for his home at Mineral Point. Although the horses provided were entirely worn out, the agent filled the coach so that they could pull it only at a walk. At the end of half a mile, Strong and all the other passengers except one, a lady, got out and walked ahead for three miles, beating the coach by half an hour. Despairing of such progress. Strong and two other passengers now hired a private conveyance to take them to Mineral Point, where they arrived towards midnight. Aside from all the delay and discomfort experienced, the extra expense entailed upon him by the delinquencies of the transportation company amounted to more than twenty-three dollars.

It may be supposed by present-day readers that experiences such as the one described were by no means routine incidents of Stagecoach travel. Perhaps, such a supposition would be true, yet the narratives of the time leave no room for doubt that they were of distressingly frequent occurrence. On the matter of overturning, an English traveler in America at a somewhat earlier date relates that passengers were trained to respond to the driver's frequent requests to lean on one side or the other to aid in preventing the upsetting of the coach in the deep ruts with which the road abounded. "Now, gentlemen to the right," the Jehu (driver of a coach) would call, and immediately the passengers would project their bodies halfway out of the coach in the direction indicated. "Now, gentlemen to the left," would be heard, and all would throw themselves in this direction.

Even on the great National Road, the most famous highway in the country, stage upsets were not unknown. When Black Hawk was taken on his tour of the East, following the disastrous war of 1832, at Washington, Pennsylvania, the horses attached to the coach conveying the noted chief and several of his Indian companions ran away. The coach capsized after a mad dash down the hill, and the men were severely bruised and shaken. Black Hawk was the first to emerge, and to the crowd, which quickly gathered, he gave vent to his feelings in loud and vehement tones.

Although no record was made of the warrior's address, the observation of Henry Clay, made on a similar occasion, tells one of the most delightful examples on record of the great statesman's ready wit and unfailing good humor. Near Uniontown, Pennsylvania, the coach was upset. The driver, catapulting from his elevated seat, landed on his head and righted himself with a broken nose. Clay, however, emerged from the vehicle unhurt and with the smiling remark, "The Clay of Kentucky has been mixed with the limestone of Pennsylvania."

Judged by present-day standards of comfort and convenience, stagecoach travel in the pioneer West was arduous enough even when performed under the most favoring conditions. At other times it was an experience to be undergone only at the behest of grim necessity. The travel conditions materially remained the same until the end of the stagecoach era. As evidence of this, let's note the experience of Mrs. Ellet on a journey from Chicago to Galena in 1852. By this time, the railroad ran as far west as Cherry Valley, seven miles southwest of Rockford, where the journey by Stage was begun. At Rockford, there was a pause of an hour for dinner, but fifty minutes were consumed in preparing the meal, leaving the passengers but ten in which to eat it and secure their places on the Crowded Stage. The heat was oppressive, and the dust stifling. Soon the lumbering vehicle plunged into a dangerous mud-hole from which it emerged with a violent jerk, to the utter discomfort of the "trembling, grumbling passengers." At Freeport, a miserable supper awaited the travelers with the same delay in preparing and hurry in despatching it as at dinner.

The night ride which followed was one of prolonged torture to all concerned. The dust, indeed, abated, for a steady rain came on, which soon turned the prairie road into a morass, appearing, under the fitful glare of the oil lamps, as "a long line of black mud, checkered by holes at one side or another while now and then a tumble-down bridge came in view. But let no one imagine," continues Mrs. Ellet, "that the mere view can give the least idea of a prairie slough, or mud hole. You may see one deceitfully covered with green turf and suspect no danger till your horses' feet or one of your wheels sunk so far as to render recovery impossible without the aid of stakes and ropes brought to the rescue. The story of the pedestrian's cap moving just above the black ooze while the rider and horse below appeared no fable. Then the mud is a peculiar quality, coal-black and tenacious as tar.

"After our coach had plunged and slipped along an hour or two, lurching almost to an overturn first on one side, then on another, the voice of the driver calling for a light—for he could not see an inch and never drove over this road before—did not tend to reassure those disposed to think of accidents, particularly as the information was added that a night seldom passed without some stage being overset. The pockets of cigar smokers were searched for matches, but the attempt to light the lamp was in vain until the last match had been used. Presently the driver in front roared out "to take care of the bridge which his wheels had just demolished; a caution was withheld till we were going over it, bringing the Stage down with a swing from which it seemed impossible to recover it. Next, our driver called great alarm for help; one of the horses had slipped and sprawled in the mud. A succession of such agreeable incidents during the whole night kept before our minds the probability of having limbs broken or of spending the rest of the hours of darkness on the lone waste prairie, miles from any human habitation, with the wet grass for a couch. These not-very exhilarating circumstances were rendered intolerable by the most shocking profanity on the part of the drivers. Ours kept up a soliloquy (talking out loud to yourself) of oaths. When an accident or a stoppage brought him into the fellowship of his companions, the concert of blasphemies was absolutely terrifying."

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

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[1] Fullersburg, Illinois, was on the edge of Indian Country. It was where a roadhouse once stood along the Southwest Plank Road (Rt 34 / Ogden Avenue), a stop on the Frink, Walker & Co. Known as Castle Inn; it is believed that Abraham Lincoln spoke from their veranda while riding his circuit. 

Abraham Lincoln's court circuit extended thru these cities and counties:

He stopped at these cities: Starting from Clinton to Monticello, then to Urbana, Danville, Paris, Charleston, Shelbyville, Sullivan, Decatur, Taylorville, and Springfield. At different times in the course of Lincoln's circuit-riding, he traveled thru each of the following counties: Sangamon, Menard, Mason, Tazewell, Woodford, Livingston, McLean, DeWitt, Piatt, Champaign, Vermilion, Edgar, Coles, Shelby, Moultrie, Macon, and Christian.

The History of the First Chicago Stockyard; the Bull's Head Market.

In 1827, Archibald Clybourn built a log slaughterhouse on the north branch of the Chicago River and supplied meat to the garrison of Fort Dearborn, six years before Chicago became incorporated as a town.

Soon, other packers set up slaughterhouses and butcher the animals that farmers drove in from the surrounding prairies. To accommodate the ranchers, grocery keepers opened inns and provided fenced-in pens and pastures for the livestock to attract more business and add another revenue stream.

Matthew Laflin bought land at the southeastern corner of Madison Street and the Southwestern Plank Road (Ogden Avenue) and built Chicago's first privately owned stockyard called the "Bull's Head Market." It opened in 1848 and served the public.

Bull's Head Market on Madison Street and the Southwest Plank Road (Ogden Avenue). Surveyed by Henry Hart in 1853.

Laflin also built the Bull's Head Tavern and Hotel (1848-1875) for the convenience of the cattlemen arriving with their herds. It was the first hotel in the original Stockyard district.

The Three-Story Bull’s Head Tavern. Circa 1850s

In 1855, John Sherman leased the yard, and the following year he also leased the Merrick Yards at 29th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue.

Chicago Tribune "The  Fire on Sunday, March 14, 1857, Morning:"

The barn that burned near the Bull's Head Tavern was owned by Laflin & Loomis and was entirely destroyed. The loss of $250 was not insured. It was situated on the corner of Harrison and Laflin Streets.

The Union Stock Yard & Transit Company (1865-1971) opened in Chicago's meatpacking district at the end of the Civil War in 1865. Until the end of the 1920s and peaking in 1924, more meat was processed in Chicago than in any other place in the world.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Plank Road History in the Chicago area.

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In historical writing and analysis, PRESENTISM introduces present-day ideas and perspectives into depictions or interpretations of the past. Presentism is a form of cultural bias that creates a distorted understanding of the subject matter. Reading modern notions of morality into the past is committing the error of presentism. Historical accounts are written by people and can be slanted, so I try my hardest to present fact-based and well-researched articles.

Facts don't require one's approval or acceptance.

I present [PG-13] articles without regard to race, color, political party, or religious beliefs, including Atheism, national origin, citizenship status, gender, LGBTQ+ status, disability, military status, or educational level. What I present are facts — NOT Alternative Facts — about the subject. You won't find articles or readers' comments that spread rumors, lies, hateful statements, and people instigating arguments or fights.

FOR HISTORICAL CLARITY

When I write about the INDIGENOUS PEOPLE, I follow this historical terminology:

• The use of old commonly used terms, disrespectful today, i.e., REDMAN or REDMEN, SAVAGES, and HALF-BREED are explained in this article.

Writing about AFRICAN-AMERICAN history, I follow these race terms:

• "NEGRO" was the term used until the mid-1960s.
• "BLACK" started being used in the mid-1960s.
• "AFRICAN-AMERICAN" [Afro-American] began usage in the late 1980s.

— PLEASE PRACTICE HISTORICISM —

THE INTERPRETATION OF THE PAST IN ITS OWN CONTEXT.

 

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Like taxes and death, the demand for better highways is omnipresent. Leaving the Indians out of this account began with the advent of the first settler in the wilderness and has continued to the present. Nor is it to be expected that the completion of any highway program now under contemplation will permanently solve the problem, for in any progressive society, the existing standard of highway achievement will ever be the starting point from which to measure new advances.

This map is presented as a visual aid. © 2020 Dr. Neil Gale

The first step in establishing any new community in the western wilderness was usually laying a road. Indeed, the road usually preceded the settler. But when speaking of pioneer roads, the modern reader should carefully free their mind from its accumulated conceptions of today's highways. The pioneer settler of Illinois could no more have imagined the splendid thoroughfares of concrete that crisscross the state than could 19th-century people conceived the space flight. To the pioneer, a road was any track leading to a designated point. It was often not even a track, so the route would be identified by a trampled prehistoric animal migration path.

However, with the progress of settlement, the demand for improvement of these paths connected the outside world. The streams would be bridged, the swamps corduroyed, while trees and even stumps would be removed from the path in timbered sections. Spurred on by the commercial rivalry between different settlements, the pioneer would even occasionally undertake to improve the road by making it a toll road; it must be admitted, however, that in the early period, this last improvement was seldom encountered. 

However, the cleared roads did not suffice to meet the country's insistent transportation needs. The soil of pioneer Illinois was as rich and black — its mud as deep and clinging — as today, while it was saturated with moisture to a degree entirely unknown to the present generation. It followed that during much of the year, the highways were impassable, while most of the remaining time, they could be traversed only at an enormous expenditure of time and effort. A story told by Robert Dale Owen of New Harmony, Indiana, in his treatise (a written work dealing formally and systematically with a subject) on the construction of plank roads aptly illustrates the situation. He had traveled by stage to Mount Vernon on the Ohio River with one companion. It required four active horses to transport them, with two small trunks, a distance of fifteen miles; the fare was three dollars per person, and the charge, at this, was moderate, for the horses "sunk literally to their girths" in the frequent mud holes. The round trip of thirty miles was a hard two-day job for a four-horse stagecoach.

In the same discussion, Owen tells another illustration of the excessive tax imposed upon a community by the poor roads of the pioneer era. "Last winter," he says, "the inhabitants of McLeansboro, a small town in southern Illinois, some forty or fifty miles northwest of Shawneetown, found themselves, in consequence of the miserable condition of the roads around them, cut off from all supplies, and thus deprived of coffee, sugar, and other necessities of life. Tempting offers were made to several teamsters, but none of them would stir from home. At last, a neighborhood farmer declared that he had a team of four horses that no road could daunt and would risk a trip to Shawneetown and bring back the necessary supplies. Ten days elapsed, and his empty wagon was slowly and painfully dragged into town by two drooping and jaded horses scarcely to be recognized as part of the fresh and spirited team that started on this expedition. After a grueling journey, their owner finally reached Shawneetown, where he managed to secure about half a load. Two of his horses were killed in the attempt to return; his load was left on the road, and the surviving horses so worn down by the trip as to be unfit for use the rest of the winter." "The tax, in this case," concludes Owen, "was a severe one, considerably exceeding a hundred dollars for the trip." In 1850, southeastern Illinois had been settled for a generation, during which time Shawneetown had been its principal commercial center of trade and commerce.

However, such transportation stoppages affected the city merchants no less disastrously than the farmers. "Now that the trade of the city is completely prostrated by the late unfavorable weather," said the editor of the Chicago Democrat in December of 1850, "does not the fact of the want of facilities of communication with the country strike everyone most forcibly. The city is completely dependent upon and, in fact, a mere agency of the surrounding country. It derives every pulsation of its life and every breath from the agricultural region of which it is the depot."

The citizens of early Chicago had long been aware of the importance of improved highways leading into the interior. Without them, the city could not prosper; with them, there seemed no limit to its growth. The road-building problem was common to all new communities, and its burden was appalling enough. But the task that Chicago faced in this connection was, in one respect, unique, for around it, as we have seen, stretched for many miles a prairie so low and marshy as to reduce the roads across it to a condition peculiarly villainous.

"The Whiskey Point Road," says Edwin Oscar Gale in his book, "Reminiscences of Early Chicago," over which I traveled so much, was a fair sample of them all. When the summer birds were singing in southern skies, when the frosts had come, and the flowers were gone, when the rains had filled the ground with moisture and the waters covered the face of the earth, making every depression a slough, without a ditch anywhere to carry off the accumulated floods; then the wheels sank to the hubs, and the hearts of the drivers sank accordingly; then blows and coaxing were alike unavailing to start the tired teams and the settling loads.

"The spring was worse, if possible, than the fall. The snow was deep, and the ground was frozen, and during that time, as far as the eye could see, the whole outlook was a shallow, dismal, cheerless lake, without a house from the ridge to the engulfed city and from Whiskey Point Road (originally a muddy Indian trail, today's Grand Avenue got its current name from the first President of Chicago, Thomas Jefferson Vance Owen who declared that Chicago was a "grand place to live.”)

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Widow Barry's Point was located near the present-day town of Lyons. It was a stopover point for travelers on the road between Chicago and Joliet. The Widow Barry, whose name was Mary Barry, ran an inn and tavern at the point. The point was named for her after her husband, who ran an inn and tavern there, William Barry died in 1833. The exact location of Widow Barry's Point is uncertain, but it was likely on the banks of the Des Plaines River, near the intersection of present-day 5th Avenue and Barry Point Road. The point was eventually engulfed by Lake Michigan, and no trace of it remains today.

Although the road to Barry's Point was the one great thoroughfare from Chicago to the southwest, it remained for several years but a track across the prairie, the passage of which called for special preparations on the part of stage proprietors. This is well set forth by the English traveler, J. S. Buckingham, who published at London in 1842 a three-volume journal of his tour in America. In June 1840, his party ascended the Illinois River by steamer to Peru, from which point they took the stage for Chicago. After numerous changes, including all-night detention on the prairie through the foundering of the coach in a slough, they arrived at midnight at Barry's Point, the last stage station, before reaching their destination. Here, the travelers found the horses and the coach to be changed.

"The object," says the writer, "was to give us a much heavier vehicle with broad wheels like a wagon, as the road was said to be so much worse between this [Barry's Point] and Chicago than on any other part of the route, that a narrow wheel would sink up beyond the axle, and only very wide wheels could sustain us.

Note the heavy frame and broad wheels on this time-period stagecoach. You can tell it is an early coach because there are no leaf-spring shock absorbers.

While this change of coaches was in the making, we had to wait in the bar room of one of the most filthy and wretched houses we had yet seen, in which the smell of rum and tobacco, mingled with other powerfully disagreeable odors, was most offensive; the hideous-looking bar-keeper appeared like a man who never washed or combed [his hair], and none of whose garments had ever been changed since he had first put them on; altogether, nothing could be more revolting. At length, the broad-wheeled and lumbering coach being ready, we all seated ourselves and, at a creeping pace, left this last stage, the horses strolling all the way, at the rate of about two miles an hour, with baitings at every pit [stop] and slough to survey the road, before crossing it, and with the wheels scarcely ever less than six inches, and often a foot deep in mud and water. Altogether, this last night was by far the most disagreeable we had ever spent journeying through the United States. We had all the evils of bad roads, thick darkness, suffocating heat, a crowded stage, disagreeable companions, filthy stage houses, venomous mosquitoes, and continual apprehensions of being upset in the mire (an area of the wet, swampy ground, marsh). Then we left to grope our way to the nearest house for shelter. When daylight opened upon us, we obtained a distant sight of the white houses of Chicago a long way off on the plain; but, distant as they still seemed, never did weary mariner hail the first opening of the harbor, into which he was running to escape shipwreck or storm, with more joy than did we welcome these first tokens of our approach to a place of rest. It was past sunrise before we reached the town, having been six hours coming the last twelve miles and forty hours performing the journey of ninety-six miles."

A determined effort to secure relief from these intolerable conditions was now about to be made. In June of 1840, the same month of Buckingham's harrowing experience with the Barry Point Road, the citizens of Cook County and adjoining counties assembled in Chicago to consider measures or the improvement of the thoroughfare to the southwest. The Chicago Daily American accompanied the printed notice of the meeting with a vigorous editorial entitled "The Nine Mile Swamp," whose spirit is strangely reminiscent of present-day fulminations on the local transportation system. The "dismal swamp" stretching from Chicago to Barry's Point was viewed as a "great impediment" to the prosperity of Chicago, and the urgent need for a turnpike "passable at all seasons" was forcefully presented. "So far as our experience has extended," continues the editor, "we have never seen worse roads than that to Barry's Point and five miles west to Doty's on the Naperville Road. Such obstacles to commerce and inland trade should be removed in an enterprising community like ours. If our citizens and the surrounding inhabitants understand their true interests, they will be removed. If individuals cannot do the work, let them instruct the County Commissioners to do it. If the Commissioners of this county will not do it, let them authorize the city to make the road. But in any event, let the road be made. Public convenience and public prosperity demand it."

Construction of a Plank Road.

The meeting was held, and a committee of three was appointed to consider ways and means and report to an adjourned meeting of the citizenry, appointed for June 15, 1840, "the best mode of construction of the road from this city to the sand ridge, the probable expense, the mode of construction with the probable amount that could be raised by subscription for the construction of said road, and all other necessary information that may be required to carry into operation this most important improvement." 

Despite a temporary setback, the project briefly stalled due to a lack of public funding. Ten days later, the Chicago Daily American editorial called for the road's construction and suggested calling a public meeting to rally support for a fresh start.

The result is revealed in a report by the "Executive Committee on the Road between Chicago and the Sand Ridge." The Committee had taken popular subscriptions to $2,480 and had contracts amounting to $2,750. In addition, a ditch was to be constructed, which would increase the deficit to $500. "One-half mile of the road is finished," the report continues, "and all but about a mile and a half in the wettest part of the route through the swamp were progressing slowly but surely. This section of very wet road had to be re-let at an additional cost of about 32¢ per rod (1 rod = 16.5 feet). The road will be elevated about 2½ feet above the natural surface of the ground and five feet above the ditch. The Committee feels that the road will surpass all the expectations that have been formed of it in usefulness." Almost two years later, in September of 1842, the Chicago Daily American announced the completion of the turnpike to Barry's Point. But "All of the subscription money could not be collected, and it is asked that the subscribers step forward and keep their word so that the contractors, who have done such good work, may be paid."

The new turnpike improved the natural swamp through which it ran. Still, unless the "expectations" the townsmen had formed concerning the improvement were exceedingly modest, they were doomed to disappointment. A turnpike made of the rich black soil of Illinois may be an excellent highway in dry weather, but at such times was the natural prairie. Its condition in wet weather requires little description to anyone who has ever undertaken to drive a farm wagon over the dirt roads of Illinois after heavy rain. "The turnpike," writes Gale in his reminiscences, "was never a success. The mud seemed several feet deeper than on the prairie in its normal, plastic condition. The clay is composed of appeared to have a grudge against every living thing, horse, ox, or man and threw its tenacious tentacles around all things to draw them down to its infernal level. Human ingenuity could invent no rougher or more detestable roads to travel over than the pike at such times. Once on it, there was no escape to the side, save at the peril of your life.

"Even when some of our courageous citizens tried in their desperate moments to improve it and made a toll road, they found the task too much for them; the ruts were too deep, the mud too bottomless. Huge stones were hauled, from year to year, at a great expense to the disgruntled taxpayers, and it was hoped that these would form a good foundation for the improvement. But they only stuck out at every point, sad monoliths of the little ones buried among the broken wheels and axles of defunct wagons. There, they stood in stubborn stateliness, while the largest of them defied the best efforts of the corporation to reduce them to cobbles. The curses heaped upon the pike for so many years, and which the brute seemed to enjoy, were now divided between the road and the citizens who had the preposterous audacity to try to reform that which was not meant to be reformed. The band of presumptuous men were finally glad to relinquish their hopeless charge to the anathemas of the teamsters and the public, who had no alternative but to continue to drive their sad, sore, prematurely old, broken-down teams over its ever-changing surface."

Canada came at length from the land of distant Russia by way of backwoods to solve Chicago's problem of bridging the troublesome situation that nature had thrown around her. After many years of residence in Russia, an English official, Lord Sydenham, became familiar with building plank roads to create an outlet across the marshy ground to produce certain mines. Later, on becoming governor-general of Canada, he persuaded the inhabitants of the utility to adapt the Russian device to their own particular situation. Beginning in 1839, when the first Canadian plank road was built, the idea spread rapidly until, within a decade, upwards of 500 miles had been constructed.

From Canada, the plank-road idea spread after considerable enthusiasm with which communities seized upon it was pretty astounding. New York took the lead, the first plank road company to receive a charter in this country, one from Central Square to Saline, opened for traffic in July of 1846. Its success was immediate, and the flood of applications to the state legislature for charters for similar companies became so great as to threaten to monopolize the entire attention of that body. To remedy this, a general law was passed in 1847 governing the incorporation of plank road companies, being the first of its kind in the United States.

From New York, the plank road furor swept westward. An exhaustive report on the subject in the Wisconsin legislature of 1848 concluded that not only was it good policy but "an incumbent duty'* for the legislature to "encourage the construction of this class of public thoroughfares throughout the length and breadth of Wisconsin." Illinois and Indiana followed suit by enacting the following year's general laws incorporating plank roads.

As the Barry Point road was the first highway out of Chicago on which any genuine attempt at road building was ever made, it became the route of the city's first plank road. The contract for the initial section from Chicago to Doty's Tavern at Riverside, ten miles in length, began on January 20, 1848, and the road was opened to traffic early in September. It consisted of a single track, eight feet wide, made by laying down two stringers and covering them with a three-inch plank, the stringers being bedded in the earth so that the weight of the plank rested directly upon it.

A Toll Plank Road.

Financially, this first plank road out of Chicago was a great and immediate success. The cost of construction was approximately $16,000 ($469,275 today). A four-horse vehicle paid 37½¢ toll for the privilege of traversing the ten-mile highway; a single team paid 25¢ and a horse and rider paid 12½¢ (equals 1 "bit"). Even though the short length of the highway and bad roads at either end combined with handicap traffic, the receipts from the first month's operation amounted to $1,500 ($44,000 today). In the Chicago Democrat of October 9, one observer reported that 96 persons had passed through the toll gates in a single hour, "and this, we are told, is no ordinary spectacle." The enthusiastic reporter calculated that this meant a $24 per hour return on the road costing $16,000."

To draw any general deduction from a single observation would be, of course, absurd. Still, the fact is clear that for a time, the road returned to the stockholders a profit on their investment, which could not fail to stimulate the desire of outsiders to put their money into similar projects. In the illustration which has already been cited, Robert Dale Owen demonstrates that one dollar would have been a fair charge for his fifteen-mile stagecoach journey if made over a good road; the remaining two dollars was the tax paid "for the privilege of wading, at the rate of three miles an hour, through mud under which our wheel-hubs were continually disappearing."

The Southwestern Plank Road bridged the ancient "nine-mile swamp" between Riverside and Chicago, and the farmer gladly paid the toll of 25¢ exacted for the privilege of using it, avoiding thereby the far heavier tax In time and labor which hauling his load through the marshy ground entailed. "The rate of toll allowed by law is 2½¢ per mile," wrote the editor of the Prairie Farmer in March of 1849 to an inquiring Iowa subscriber, "and the whole amount is charged hitherto (up to this time), but it is far too high and will be reduced. The public does not complain because they are glad to have a road, at any rate." Two years later, the editor of the Chicago Democrat was "credibly informed that some of the plank roads from the city are paying from 30% to 40%." Little wonder he closes with the succinct comment, "The best investment afloat."

Within the next few years after building the road to Barry's Point, the citizens of Chicago and the adjoining country had constructed a network of plank roads radiating out from the city like spokes from the center of a wheel. The Southwestern Road, whose beginnings we have already noted, was completed as far as Brush Hill, a distance of sixteen miles, early in 1850. By the close of 1851, it extended to Naperville, where it connected with a road under construction to Oswego. Three miles east of Naperville, it also connected with St. Charles and Warrenville Plank Road, two and one-half miles of which were completed in 1851. Still, other roads were built from Naperville to Sycamore and from Oswego to Little Rock so that the Southwestern Road, with its connections, constituted a network of improved roads throughout the rich country to the southwest of Chicago.

Similarly, the Northwestern Plank Road connected the city with the upper Des Plaines Valley. It left the city on Milwaukee Avenue, the line of the old Milwaukee Road, with Wheeling as the ultimate destination. Begun in 1849, the Chicago Democrat of September 4 reported that plank had been laid as far as Oak Ridge, eight miles out. During the next two years, the mainline was run three miles beyond Dutchman's Point (Niles, Ill.) toward Wheeling, with two shorter feeders thrown out to the Des Plaines River. The cost of the twenty-three miles of the road built, together with toll houses, gates, and one bridge, was reported to be $51,000 ($1,554,875 today). From the Northwestern Road at Oak Ridge, the Western Plank Road ran west to the boundary of Du Page County, where it connected with the Elgin and Genoa Plank Road, which ran through Elgin to Genoa in Kendall County, fifty miles from Chicago.

Less important than the preceding were the Northern and Southern plank roads. The Southern plank road had been planned to run as far as Middleport in Iroquois County, a distance of seventy-five miles. It was constructed by way of State Street and Vincennes Avenue line as far as Kyle's Tavern, ten miles out, in 1851, for $21,000 ($640,250 today). Here, the shadow of the future fell across the enterprise, for the location of the projected Chicago branch of the Illinois Central Railroad led the promoters of the plank road to abandon all thought of extending it farther. Yet even the short fragment built proved immediately remunerative, for at the close of 1851, the directors could declare a 14% dividend from the results of the first year of operation. 

In 1854, landowners organized to make their land more attractive and valuable by constructing Lake Shore Plank Road, which became Evanston Avenue and was renamed Broadway in 1913. Lake Shore Plank Road was the last wooden plank road built in Chicago. From the junction of Clark Street with North Avenue, at the time, the city limits, the Lake Shore Plank Road ran parallel with the lakeshore to Hood's Tavern on the Green Bay Trail, a distance of about five miles. The length and amount of traffic on Lake Shore Plank Road made this the least important member of Chicago's plank road system.

It remains to be spoken of the Blue Island Avenue  Plank Road, the last addition to the plank road system built in Chicago. It ran from Blue Island due north on the line of Western Avenue to its junction with 26th Street and Blue Island Avenue, which, in 1854, the year of the road's construction, was the city's southwest border. Turning northeast at this point, it followed Blue Island Avenue into the heart of Chicago. The length of the road was thirteen miles, and its strategic importance consisted in the fact that it afforded a direct route to the city for the heavy travel from the south, which concentrated at Blue Island. In the annual review of Chicago's commerce published by Governor Bross in 1854, the Blue Island Road, then under construction, is spoken of in glowing terms. The earth excavated from the large ditches cut by the drainage commissioners along the road made a high and splendid grade, while the ditches themselves rendered the adjoining land dry and arable at all times. The Avenue across the prairie, 120 feet in width, was to be lined with trees on either side; moreover, "as by this road cattle could be driven to the city without danger of fright from locomotives, and as two of the principal roads entering the city meet at Brighton (modern Archer and Western Avenues), with abundant water at all times, and pasture and meadowlands in almost unlimited quantities beyond, no one can doubt its favorable position for becoming the principal cattle market of Chicago." 

Thus did the intelligent editor of the Chicago Tribune essay on the role of the prophet less than seventy years ago. Today, the "town of Brighton" exists but in memory, while for miles beyond its ancient site, the "pasture and meadowlands" of old have been metamorphosed into city streets and squares. Two miles to the eastward lies the "principal cattle market," called the "Bulls Head Market," which opened to the public at Madison Street and Ogden Avenue in 1848, not only of Chicago but of all the earth. But instead of plodding along a tree-bordered country road as of old, unvexed by the sight of the puffing locomotive, the patient cattle from a thousand miles around the ride to their doom in "palace" cars drawn over roads of steel by the iron horse itself. 

The decline of the plank roads was almost as rapid as their rise, and that generation had lost all knowledge of this "improvement," which to the men and women of 1850 seemed nothing short of revolutionary. To understand the change which led so quickly to their abandonment, it is necessary to take some note of the manner of construction and the problems encountered in operating them. As commonly constructed, a roadway sixteen feet in width was graded; on this, eight-foot planks were laid crosswise. This was deemed sufficient for a single-track road, the remaining portion of the grade being available for teams to turn out in passing. Lengthwise of the road, two rows of girders, sometimes as small as two by four inches, were laid, embedded in the earth in such fashion that the planks rested directly upon it. The planks were not nailed to the girders, nor were the latter intended to support their weight. Their primary function was to prevent the tendency of the planks, mainly when the roadbed was new and soft, to tilt or turn when struck by the heavy wheels. From the supporting roadbed, all water was to be excluded, and the planks, resting directly on the compact earth, were expected to afford unyielding support for whatever burden might be brought upon them.

The kind of timber employed and the cost of constructing such a road varied with local conditions. The two chief cost factors were the lumber and the labor of grading. Pine and hemlock were sometimes used for planking, but oak and black walnut quickly demonstrated their superiority. The Southwestern Plank Road was first planked with pine, but within a year or two, the planks began to give out, and after that, around Chicago, oak seems to have been exclusively employed.

The roads were constructed by private corporations and had, therefore, aside from their public function, a private commercial aspect. As worked out in Chicago, the construction cost was about $2,000 per mile. The toll rates were prescribed by law, and collections were made by the keepers of toll-gate houses scattered at intervals of five or six miles along the line. The law in Illinois copied closely the features of the New York law, but the tolls the company was permitted to charge were considerably higher in the newer western states than in New York. What rates were charged on the first Chicago road we have already seen. According to the editor of the Prairie Farmer, the public was "glad to get the road at any rate," but this Arcadian state of mind did not long persist.

With a satisfied public and stockholders receiving dividends running as high as thirty or forty percent, one might suppose the solution to Chicago's transportation problem had been attained. To some degree, it had, for there can be no doubt that the plank roads were a marked improvement over anything known. But actual experience revealed many drawbacks which the rosy imaginations of the promoters had not foreseen or painted, and these, combined with a fantastic degree of shortsightedness on the part of the operating companies before long, caused the public to utterly abominate the very name of plank roads.

Chiefly, the difficulties encountered concern the maintenance of the roadway. In theory, the planks were to rest on a hard roadbed, from which all water, and even space for air, was to be rigorously excluded. Thus situated, the planks were expected to remain sound for a considerable period of years; in time, of course, the impact of traffic would wear them out, but the means for renewing them would be greater with the heavier traffic volume. But experience quickly demonstrated that the roadbed could not be kept free from water over an Illinois prairie. To facilitate this, the builders had dug ditches on each side of the road, but to what avail were the ditches when they were full? "They are improving the Southwestern Plank Road on the low prairie," notes the Chicago Journal less than a year after constructing that thoroughfare, "transforming what has sometimes been a raft into a road." In contrast, a letter from Belleville a year or two later anxiously urges that some method be devised for fastening the planks to the earth. A flood there had floated off many, while more had been taken up and stacked in piles to avert this catastrophe.

A Planked Toll Road near Belleville, in St. Clair County, Illinois.

With water under the planks, the impact upon loaded vehicles caused them to slip, and a cavity soon developed. In addition to the extra strain and wear resulting from this condition, the air caused the planks to decay on the underside. In the first enthusiasm of plank road construction, it had been assumed that a three-inch white oak plank would last twelve to fifteen years before renewal became necessary and that the annual cost for repairs would not exceed ten dollars per mile. This estimate proved ridiculously incorrect, but under its influence, the companies paid out in dividends the significant income received during the first few years, and no adequate sum was set aside for maintenance or reserve built up for renewal of the planking when this should become necessary. 

The consequences of such a course are fairly obvious. Before many years, roads became more a source of discomfort and danger than an advantage to travelers. Under such conditions, the public objected to paying the exact tolls or even using the road at all. The decay of one link in the Chicago system, the road from St. Charles to Sycamore, is thus described by the historian of DeKalb County: "For about one season, the road was a decided convenience, but soon the hardwood plank became warped by the sun; the road was as rough as the old-fashioned corduroy; no one used it when they could avoid it; the neighboring inhabitants finally confiscated the plank and the road was abandoned." The historian of Lake County records that in the early 1860s, he drove almost daily over the Lake Shore Plank Road; "it was an even choice between jouncing over a causeway with every other plank gone, or taking the deep sand on either side." A decade had sufficed to span the rise and fall of the plank-road system. "God bless the man who invented the plank roads," wrote "Philanthropist" to the Peoria Press in 1853; his feeling on the subject ten years later could not have been permitted expression in public print.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

Article: Rudimentary Road Construction History in Early Chicago and the Eastern United States.