Day 186: Railroads in the Heartland

During the formative years of the railroad industry, the desire for the iron horse and a grasp of the realities of finance and politics prompted states in the Old Northwest to launch ambitious systems of public works (canals and railroads in particular), unded and built by "the people." But the crippling economic impact of the Panic of 1837, which devastated the region, eventually prompted the sale of state-sponsored railroads to risk-taking capitalists. The time seemed auspicious for private enterprise to open this transportation frontier.   

It would be a combination of individual investors, syndicates, and the continued financial backing from units of government (federal, state, and local) that made possible the completion of the rail network in the Midwest. And it was an impressive accomplishment. At midcentury, Ohio counted 575 miles of railroad; Michigan, 342; Indiana, 228; Illinois, 111; and Wisconsin, 20. Iowa, Minnesota, and Missouri, however, had none. On the eve of the Civil War, the Ohio mileage, largest in the nation, had soared to 2,946; Illinois, 2,790; Indiana, 2,163; Wisconsin, 905; and Michigan, 779. Even though Minnesota continued to await the iron horse, Iowa's mileage stood at 655, and Missouri's was 817. Expansion continued before and after the Panic of 1873 triggered several years of severe depression and again after the hard times of the 1890s interrupted track laying.   

Sections of the Midwest saw some construction following the return of prosperity with the Spanish-American War and up until World War I. Unlike railroad building on the Great Plains and in parts of the West, which was considerable during the 1920s, by 1917 the railroad map of the Midwest had jelled. Most of the new lines between 1898 and 1917 were feeders, branches primarily created to haul agricultural, lumber, or mineral traffic, although some cut-offs, designed to speed the flow of goods and people, were installed. In 1911 the Interstate Commerce Commission, which Congress created twenty-four years earlier to regulate the rail enterprise in the public interest, made its annual enumeration of the mileage in the Midwest. Illinois ranked in the top position regionally with 11,980 miles (only Texas, with 14,777 miles, could claim a greater intrastate network); Iowa, 9,855; Ohio, 9,128; Michigan, 8,943; Minnesota, 8,931; Missouri, 8,108; Indiana, 7,447; and Wisconsin, 7,399. Such impressive figures were hardly surprising considering these states' economic strengths and population levels.   
The vast natural and human wealth and potential of the Midwest caused it to attract ''smart money." Investments poured into farms, businesses, and factories and continued for decades, interrupted only by the occasional depression and eventually by the "rust bowl" years of the 1970s and 1980s. This growth prompted railroad promoters in the antebellum years to recognize that the iron horse must link more than "inland" communities to a waterway: lake, river, or canal. It did not take long for a broken and scattered pattern of rail lines to give way to what economic historian Alfred D. Chandler has correctly labeled "system building." The thrust of railroading after the Civil War was to fuse together smaller, independent roads into larger, unified ones. A combination of mergers, leases, and stock controls made possible a sophisticated railroad structure. These consolidated roads, flying their own corporate banners, undertook their own programs of line construction.
   
By the dawn of the twentieth century the Midwest could not claim to be the sole place served by affiliated rail systems, often allied with the nation's premier banking and investment houses. Yet a regional review suggests that the East and especially the South still had substantial numbers of small and medium-sized carriers, although even there the loss of corporate independence was accelerating. On the other hand, great railways already dominated the West. The Southern Pacific, for one, had gained "octopus" status in the minds of Californians, owing to its size, economic prowess, and the literary skills of novelist Frank Norris. Again, the Midwest took on more of a balanced, mixed position. Here a combination of systems, notably the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy; Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul; Chicago & North Western; Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific; and Illinois Central; lesser carriers like the Chicago Great Western; Detroit, Toledo & Ironton; Minneapolis & St. Louis; Monon; Pere Marquette; and Wisconsin Central; and a number of autonomous short lines, including the Kalamazoo, Lake Shore & Chicago; La Crosse & Southeastern; and Muscatine North & South, predominated.   

Regional differences did not go unnoticed by contemporaries. In a 1903 interview for a Twin Cities newspaper, A.B. Stickney, the driving force behind the Chicago Great Western, which recently had completed a strategic extension into the Omaha Gateway from Fort Dodge, Iowa, told the reporter that "we in the richest farm and factory belt of our country have created a mixture of large and not so large railroads. . . . The Maple Leaf Route [Chicago Great Western] faces the task of continuing to provide the best service to its many loyal patrons in Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois and Missouri where there are so many David and Goliath contests."   

By the turn of the twentieth century the railroad map of the Midwest was unequaled. Anyone who examined it would quickly sense that this was the vital center of America's massive and far-flung network of steel rails. Most striking were those principal east-west arteries the "high-iron" speedways from eastern metropolises to Chicago and St. Louis and the equally significant transcontinental roads or their connectors to western destinations. Moreover, there were other important lines and the many miles of branches and twigs that sprang from the sturdy stems.

~~ Railroads in the Heartland : Steam and Traction in the Golden Age of Postcards -by- H. Roger Grant