William B. Ogden and the railroad that pioneered Chicago’s place as a transportation hub

On Oct. 25, 1848, the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad dispatched a train from a station on Kinzie Street just north of the Chicago River. It was the first railroad in a city that in future decades would become a rail hub for the entire nation.

As the system grew, tracks and rail yards fanned out around the city center, making through passage difficult. So for years, until air travel took over in the late 1950s, Chicago became a required stop on cross-country trips. One railroad moved travelers to and from Manhattan and the East Coast and Chicago. Another did the same between Chicago and Los Angeles and other points west.

“A pig can go coast to coast, but passengers have to change trains in Chicago,” Chicagoans would boast, while others complained about that same fact.

Such issues were far in the future when the Chicago and Galena Union Railroad chugged into being. That first train consisted of an improvised passenger car and an empty freight car, and ran to and from Oak Park. That was as far as the Galena and Chicago went at the time.

As the train was preparing to return to Chicago on the first such go-round, a partner in the railroad, J. Young Scammon, “noticed a farmer at the back of the crowd perched a top a wagon load of wheat,” Jack Harpster wrote in his biography of William B. Ogden, Scammon’s partner.

“Scammon walked back to the man and asked in his booming voice if the farmer would like his wheat to be the first in history to enter Chicago by train. The old farmer hesitated, uncertain. He pulled a dirty red handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his brow, while considering whether or not to entrust his valuable cargo to the smelly little train. When Scammon told him the delivery would be free and he could even accompany his wheat, the old man couldn’t resist.“

Harpster attributed his account to “Galena railroad folklore.” Ogden’s personal papers, which may have documented such an event, didn’t survive the Great Chicago Fire.

Ogden died in 1877. The principal speaker at an 1881 memorial at the Chicago Historical Society noted that Ogden aimed his tracks toward Galena in northwestern Illinois, intent on transporting the area’s iron ore. The railroad fell short of its goal.

“Instead of being pushed forward to its destination and becoming the pioneer road to the Mississippi, it made a terminus at Freeport where it remained today as a colossal mistake surely ever made even by a corporation,” the speaker said.

Yet the railroad might not have gone anywhere, except for Ogden.

Born and raised in New York, Ogden served in that state’s legislature and foresaw the railroad making the difference between states that prospered and those that stagnated.

He brought that concept and an unshakable faith in himself when he moved to Chicago around 1836.

“I was born close to a saw mill, early left an orphan, was cradled in a sugar trough, christened in a mill-pond, graduated in a log-school house, and at fourteen, fancied I could do anything I turned my hand to,” he told an impoverished woman worried about what would become of her children, according to his biography

His brother-in-law believed that prosperity lay on the western frontier. He bought substantial real estate in what became Chicago. Ogden was sent there to subdivide and sell it.

Ogden stayed on, and in 1837 was elected Chicago’s first mayor. About 10 years later, he restarted the moribund Galena and Chicago Union railroad by persuading farmers to invest in the line. Traveling the state, he argued that a railroad would increase the value of their crops by getting it to market quicker and cheaper.

“We trust that no farmer living within ten to thirty miles of the proposed route will refuse to take stock,” wrote the Prairie Farmer, a publication accorded biblical credibility in Middle America. “If unable to take more than one share, then take that and show by your action that you desire the work to be built, and think the project expedient. ”“

That endorsement and Ogden’s gifted salesmanship pushed up local real estate values, sometimes even before his railroad reached a town.

On Dec. 5, 1849, an ad in the Freeport Journal announced an auction of 150 town lots in Rockford, and noted: “The location of Rockford at the central point on the Galena and Chicago Railroad, and its being the place where branch roads from the North and South join that road, must beyond all doubt, make it the most important business point in the interior of Northern Illinois.“

By then Ogden had redeemed his promise that farmers wouldn’t regret investing in his venture.

“Notice is hereby given to the Stockholders of the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad Company, that an installment of five per cent, on each share of the Capital Stock of said company is called for, payable on the first day of June, 1849,” its board of directors announced in the Freeport Journal’s classified columns.

The railroad benefited from Ogden’s devotion to frugality. His business plan rested on a policy of never buying anything unless the money to pay for it was at hand. When he could afford a secondhand locomotive, Ogden bought one from the Michigan Central Railroad. Delivered aboard a schooner, it was refurbished and renamed the Pioneer. Producing steam by burning wood, it pulled the cars of the Galena and Chicago’s 1848 debut.

It remained in service for a remarkable 27 years and made an encore appearance at Chicago’s Railroad Fair of 1948. Its boilers could still propel it on the centennial of its initial Chicago to Oak Park run.

Ogden lobbied Congress on behalf of a transcontinental railroad, and was president of the Union Pacific Railroad that fulfilled those specifications. Locally, he served on the boards of several railroads that merged with the Galena and Chicago.

He kick-started the growth of the Chicago and North Western Railway. In 1868, he learned the day and hour when Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad’s executives would meet with those of the Winona and St. Peter Railroad, which they wanted to buy.

“William B. made a similar appointment for two hours earlier,” the Tribune reported. He “closed the bargain for the Northwestern Company nearly an hour before the St. Paul people found they were ‘sold.’“

The purchase included a Minnesota railroad. So the Milwaukee Railroad had to pay for the privilege of running its Milwaukee to St. Paul passenger trains over tracks the Northwestern owned.

By the time of his death, Ogden’s role in making Chicago the nation’s transportation hub was secure. Evidence can be seen at the Chicago History Museum. It’s the final resting place of the Pioneer, the secondhand locomotive that huffed and puffed its way to Oak Park, 175 years ago.

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