Paxson—Early Railways of the Old Northwest. 253 
from Lake Erie to the Ohio. 1 It is an interesting coincidence 
that in this year, so momentous in the fate of western com¬ 
merce, the city which was to rise from insignificance because 
of the new order pushed its first track to the Des Plaines River 
and ran the first locomotive out of Chicago. 2 
Every year after 1848 saw new railroads undertaken and ex¬ 
isting projects hurried to completion. The Northwest was in 
the swirl of a railway fever that unsettled financial conditions 
in all of western Europe, and had its pioneers in America with 
eyes fixed upon the commerce of the Pacific and the engineering 
1 Annual Report of the Mad River and Lake Erie Railroad, Jan. 19, 
1849, pp. 1-8; Hist, of Logan Co., Ohio, (Chicago, O. L. Baskin and 
Co., 1880), 289; Hist of Champaign Co., Ohio, (Chicago, W. H. Beers 
and Co., 1881), 274; Poor, H. V., Manual of Railroads, for 1884, 705. 
2 Second Annual Report of the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, 
Apr. 5, 1849.; Church, C. A., Hist, of Rockford and Winnebago Co., 
Illinois, (Rockford, W. P. Lamb, 1900), 271. The locomotive, “Pi¬ 
oneer,” which is mentioned here, is on exhibition in the Field Colum¬ 
bian Museum, Chicago. 
