The Galena and Chicago Union Railroad (G&CU) was the first railroad constructed out of Chicago, intended to provide a shipping route between Chicago and the lead mines near Galena, Illinois. The railroad company was chartered on January 16, 1836,An Act to Incorporate the Galena and Chicago Union Rail Road Company, January 16, 1836. In Laws of the State of Illinois, Ninth General Assembly, Second Session, 1835–1836. pp. 24–30. Internet Archive. but financial difficulties delayed construction until 1848.McLear, Patrick E. "The Galena and Chicago Union Railroad: A Symbol of Chicago's Economic Maturity," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Vol. 73, No. 1 (Spring 1980), pp. 17–26. P. 24. . While the main line never reached Galena, construction to Freeport, Illinois, allowed it to connect with the Illinois Central Railroad and provide direct service to Galena. A second line was built to Fulton, Illinois; eventually this route connected to railroads in Iowa and Nebraska, and became the eastern link to the first transcontinental railroad in the United States. The G&CU was also the original railroad of what became the Chicago & North Western railroad network.
History Contexts After the Erie Canal was completed in 1825, immigrants flooded into the Midwest from the East."Erie Canal Completion." The Philadelphia Inquirer, September 10, 1825. P. 1. Chicago's location, at the southwestern end of Lake Michigan with a short, easy portage to rivers flowing south and west, made it a strategic point for white settlers moving through—as it had been for Native peoples before them.Solzman, David M. "Portage". "Encyclopedia of Chicago". Ed. Janice L. Reiff, Ann Durkin Keating, and James R. Grossman. Chicago History Museum, The Newberry Library, and Northwestern University, 2005. Accessed 24 May 2024. The white population in the region expanded exponentially, creating both markets and products that would need transportation.
One particular market that had Chicago leaders' attention was centered in Galena, Illinois,McLear, "Galena and Chicago Union," p. 17. a town named for the most common form of lead sulphide."Galena History". The City of Galena, Illinois. Long mined by Native peoples and French explorers, substantial lead deposits in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Iowa became known to settlers from the East in the early 1800s.Walthall, John A., "Galena and Aboriginal Trade in Eastern North America," Illinois State Museum, Scientific Papers, Vol. XVII. Internet Archive P. 25. St. Louis had a monopoly on shipping lead from Galena down the Mississippi River by steamboat to link to markets on the East Coast. But merchants and miners in Galena wanted a quicker, more direct route to Lake Michigan.
The Illinois and Michigan Canal was chartered on February 13, 1835, to provide a water route from Lake Michigan to the Illinois River and then to the Mississippi.An Act for the Construction of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, February 10, 1835. In Laws of the State of Illinois, 9th General Assembly, First Session. pp. 222-229. Internet Archive. However, work on the canal didn't officially begin until 1836, and various issues delayed construction,Putnam, James William. The Illinois and Michigan Canal: A Study in Economic History, The University of Chicago Press, 1918. pp. 37–38. so the canal wasn't completed and operable until April 1848.Putnam, p. 62. Once completed, the canal did in fact carry significant amounts of cargo, as its successor the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal still does.
But merchants in Galena thought a railroad would provide lower costs to transport goods more directly to and from Chicago, then on to the East Coast.McLear, "Galena and Chicago Union," p. 19. Historian Patrick E. McLear notes that boosters on the North Side of Chicago—including the railroad's future president, William Butler Ogden—also favored a railroad line coming into the city from the north, which they believed would help balance trade patterns that had so far favored areas south of the Chicago River.McLear, Patrick E. "William Butler Ogden: A Chicago Promoter in the Speculative Era and the Panic of 1837," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Vol. 70, No. 4 (Nov. 1977), pp. 283–291 . .
And so the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad was chartered on January 16, 1836, initially capitalized at one thousand shares of $100 each, for a total of $100,000. The first stockholders' meeting took place on May 23, 1836, at which a board of directors was elected; on July 3, 1836, the board elected Theophilus W. Smith as president.Yungmeyer, D. W. "Selected Items From the Minute Book of the Galena and Chicago Railroad Company With a Foreword and Comment," The Railway and Locomotive Historical Society Bulletin, October 1944, No. 65. p. 29. .
Looming financial failure The G&CU was one of seventeen railroads incorporated in that legislative session,"Incorporations" in Index to Laws of the State of Illinois, Ninth General Assembly, Second Session, 1835–1836. pp. 291–292. seven of which failed within two years.Harpster, Jack. "The First Train Out of Chicago." Railroad History, Spring-Summer 2013, No. 208, pp. 83–93 . . New railroad companies were risky ventures, because they had to spend huge amounts on construction, rolling stock, and storage and maintenance facilities before they could even begin to make money. While communities in the Midwest wanted railroads, the population simply wasn't great enough to fund and support railroad services.Overton, Richard C. Burlington Route: A History of the Burlington Lines. Knopf, 1965. pp. 4–5. Internet Archive. Knowing this, the G&CU's commissioners initially sought financing from investors in the East,McLear, "Galena and Chicago Union," p. 18. and on August 4, 1836, they increased the amount of stock for sale to $500,000, aware that building a railroad would cost much more than $100,000.Yungmeyer, p. 29.
However, the Panic of 1837 played havoc with fundraising of any sort. Few people had money to invest in a railroad, and several Directors of the company had to resign as they themselves were engulfed in financial problems. Though the Board did commission a survey of the route from downtown Chicago to the Des Plaines River, they could do nothing further.
Things seemed about to change when Elijah K. Hubbard got involved, purchasing an overwhelming majority of G&CU stock—79 percent, in fact; he also provided $30,000 for construction costs, so the railroad had funds to work with until late 1838. However, Hubbard died in May 1839 of tuberculosis, at which point it was revealed that he had been silently representing Elihu Townsend, an Eastern financier who was a director of the New York and Erie Railroad. To show Townsend that things were moving, William B. Ogden worked with developer Walter L. Newberry to plot a general route for the railroad to Galena, and several towns along the route held public meetings to demonstrate support for continuing construction. But Townsend was not convinced, offered no further support, and did nothing with his shares.McLear, "Galena and Chicago Union," pp. 18–19.
Everything came to a halt. Construction was not resumed. After their final meeting on November 22, 1837, the Directors of the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad did not meet for years.Yungmeyer, p. 30. The G&CU was no longer a functioning company.
William B. Ogden and new life for the G&CU
William B. Ogden led the movement to reinvigorate the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad. When the G&CU was first chartered, Ogden had been in Chicago for less than a year, overseeing his wealthy brother-in-law's land investments north of the Chicago River.McLear, "William Butler Ogden," p. 284. He had already worked to support railroad development as a young legislator in the state of New York, taking the lead in March 1835 to argue for state support of the New York and Erie Railroad. He asked fellow legislators to help build "continuous railways from New York to Lake Erie . . . through Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, to the waters of the Mississippi," creating "the most splendid system of internal communication ever yet devised by man." The legislation passed, and his work was seen as a resounding success.Quoted in Downard, William L. "William Butler Ogden and the Growth of Chicago," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Vol. 75, No. 1 (Spring 1982), pp. 47–60 . .
More interested in business than politics, however, two months later Ogden agreed to become the Chicago director of the American Land Company, arriving in May 1835. Although he himself was not wealthy, through his New York connections he had the trust of many rich investors. After two years in Chicago, Ogden was handling financial affairs for about a hundred Eastern investors, working with running totals, on average, of about $1 million of their funds. As his clients' profits grew, so did his own fortune.Downard, p. 51. He was a savvy businessperson, well liked in Chicago, and he seems to have been a natural leader. In 1837 he was elected the first Mayor of Chicago, and in subsequent years he "was a leader in nearly every Chicago institution and investment enterprise in the 1840s and 1850s."Downard, p. 53.
As he had been in New York, Ogden was particularly interested in building transportation networks. He invested in—and became president of—a steamboat company that operated for two years, linking Chicago with the western terminus of the Michigan Central Railroad at St. Joseph, Michigan.McLear, "William Butler Ogden," p. 286. He and a partner got the contract to dig the Illinois and Michigan Canal, which they eventually completed a few years after the Panic of 1837 had calmed down. Although both ventures strained him financially, he successfully avoided bankruptcy,McLear, "William Butler Ogden," p. 287. and when the economy settled down he focused on reviving the moribund Galena and Chicago Union Railroad.
As the years had gone on with no railroad service, frustrated mine operators in Wisconsin had begun to use wagon companies to transport lead to Madison and then on to Milwaukee. Newspapers in Milwaukee documented the exponentially increasing shipments of lead, taunting Chicagoans that this trade suggested "Milwaukee is destined to be the greatest town on Lake Michigan."Milwaukee Sentinel, July 6, 1841, quoted in McLear, "Galena and Chicago Union," p. 20. As time went on, more towns in northwestern Illinois demanded action, to the point where supporters from Chicago realized that they might also lose the Galena market to the Madison-Milwaukee wagon companies.McLear, "Galena and Chicago Union," p. 21.
Ogden and his associates began planning. In 1845, a group of businessmen from Galena, Rockford, and Chicago met in Rockford to organize a convention of interested parties from along the G&CU route. The convention began in Rockford on January 7, 1846 and was attended by Charles S. Hempstead who had just finished his term as Galena's first mayor. According to D. W. Yungmeyer, "the Chicago group was so well organized that it practically took over all the official chairs, committee heads, and about everything else, and because of its readiness with resolutions, statistics, and so on, secured the whole-hearted consent and approval of .–. everything [they] proposed."Yungmeyer, p. 31. Delegates voted to create an organization that would take on the task of resurrecting the Galena and Chicago Union, appointing a committee which included eight Chicago representatives as well as former Galena mayor Hempstead.Griffing, William. Introduction to "1837: Charles Smith Hempstead to William Hempstead." Spared and Shared, 9 October 2022. Retrieved 15 September 2024.