250 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 
borious years to build, and when its first train steamed into the 
capital, in 1847, carrying an itinerant circus in addition to its 
hilarious excursionists, the celebration had been enthusiastic* 3 
But north of Indianapolis there was no continuation of the 
road. The counties along the Wabash canal were still depend¬ 
ent upon trail and country road for their connection with the 
southern portion of the state. 
The Madison and Indianapolis was one of two local roads 
touching the Ohio in 1847. The other had been started into 
the back country from Cincinnati, winding its way along the 
Little Miami Liver, from which it derived its name, to Xenia 
and Springfield. * 1 To meet these feelers from the south, a larger 
group of railway arms extended from the north. At four points 
below Lake Huron,—Detroit, Monroe, Toledo, and Sandusky, 
—six lines of track had begun to penetrate Michigan and Ohio, 
and had advanced, by the end of 1847, to Pontiac, Kalamazoo, 
Tecumseh, Hillsdale, Beliefontaine, and Mansfield. The only 
other railroad in the Old ^Northwest was in Illinois, where the 
abandoned Horthem Cross, from Meredosia to Springfield, was 
a monument to the misguided enthusiasm of a youthful state. 2 
In 1847, no rival had come to end the fifteen years of un- 
eon tested supremacy enjoyed by the Ohio Canal. The pioneer 
period of the railways was indeed nearing its close, but the re¬ 
markable changes of the next ten years were beyond prophecy. 
In a large proportion of cases railway construction began at 
points already well established in trade or industry, and ad¬ 
vanced to the unknown from the known. An apparent excep¬ 
tion to this rule is the line which commenced its track at Mf 
dosia, on the Illinois Liver, and headed for Springfield, in 
Sangamon County. Xeither of its terminals was a place of 
s Sulgrove, B. R., Hist, of Indianapolis and Marion County, (Phila., 
1884), 135. _ 
1 Hunt’s Merchants' Magazine, XXIV, 640; Niles’ Register LXXV, 
310. 
2 Hist, of Sangamon Co., Illinois, (Chicago, Inter-State Pub. Co., 
1881), I. 145; Hist of Vermilion Co., Ill., (Chicago, Hill and Iddings, 
1880), 351; Carter, C. F., When Railroads were New, (N. Y., Henry 
Holt and Co., 1909), 186; McConnell, G. M., Recollections of the 
Northern Cross Railroad, in Ill. State Hist. Library Pub., XIII, 145. 
Its condition in 1843 is described by an emigrant to Iowa. Iowa 
Historical Record, Xl'II, 40. 
