258 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts, and Letters. 
An examination of the map for 1853 discloses the great steps 
towards adequate communication that had been taken in Ohio 
and Indiana,. Railroads skirted the whole southern shore of 
Lake Erie, 1 and from 1 . Cleveland and Sandusky, on the north¬ 
east, to Dayton, Cincinnati, and Indianapolis, on the south¬ 
west, stretched what was already an intricate network of tracks. 
Illinois, however, remained largely dependent upon the future, 
with beginnings of lines penetrating the northern counties to 
the boundary of Wisconsin, hut without a road in operation 
south of a line that could he drawn from Alton, through Spring- 
field and Bloomington to Kankakee. 
On the next three maps, for 1854, 1855, and 1856, it is 
in Illinois that the chief interest is to he found. The Illinois 
Central Railroad was finally started, and after building four¬ 
teen miles in 1852, to let in the Michigan Central have an entry 
into Chicago, had made a fair beginning in 1853, and had set¬ 
tled down to rapid work the following year. Building at once 
on five different parts of its route, in 1854, it had been able in 
1855 nearly to complete its task. In 1856 there was but a 
single section left to be ironed before the work was done, ex¬ 
tending up the very center of the state from Cairo to La Salle, 
and thence to Galena, 2 with a Chicago branch running nearly 
parallel for more than half its length. It was the longest and 
most imposing railway in the Korthwest. It had extracted 
from the United States extensive aid in grants of public lands. 
But it traversed a country which had little use for the new 
Michigan Canal, and less for it. Einished on the eve of a com¬ 
mercial crisis., it never returned an income on its cost until the 
civil war, with troops and stores to be hauled, brought an acci¬ 
dental commerce to its rescue. 3 Had the railways of the Klorth- 
1 Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway System and Repre¬ 
sentative Employees, (Biog. Pub. Co., 1900). 
2 The Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, which had contemplated 
building to Galena, from Chicago, by way of Freeport, relinquished 
to the Illinois Central its rights west of Freeport. Later it realized 
its blunder in giving up its Mississippi terminus and constructed a 
branch from Aurora Junction, by way of Dixon, to Fulton. Flint, 
H. M., 275; Ninth Annual Report of the G., and C., U., Rr., (1856, June 
4.) 
3 Ackerman, W. K., Plistorical Sketch of the Illinois Central Rail¬ 
road, (Chicago, Fergus Printing Co., 1890), 68. 
