Freeport, IL: Railroad Hub

Satellite
Red: IC charter line (west part exists as CN, south part was abandoned by ICG)
Yellow: Aban/C&NW/G&CU
Green: Aban/Milwaukee
Blue: CM&N (east part exists as CN, west part was abandoned in 1942 (FD&N) and 2000 (WICT...ICG...CM&N)

If you count the branches that fork off in the vicinity of Freeport, it used to have eight "spokes" and four railroad bridges. Now it has two spokes and two trail bridges.

1944 Freeport Quad @ 62,500

Illinois Central was the first land grant charter created by the Federal government. Back then, Galena was a prosperous river town because of the lead mines in the area. Many considered Chicago a glorified trading post in a swamp. But some people had the vision to realize that Galena was stagnant and Chicago was enjoying vigorous growth, in part because of the I&M Canal. So a "branch" was also built from Centralia, IL to Chicago. In fact, IC created the town of Centralia. The land-grant route went north through the center of the state to Freeport, then turned west to Galena. The red line roughly indicates how the IC charter line went through town.

Another early railroad was the C&NW/Galena & Chicago Union. In fact, it was the first railroad in Chicago. It built from Chicago towards Galena. However, they never reached Galena. Freeport was the terminus because C&NW started building a more direct route to the transcontinental terminus in Omaha, NE from West Chicago. The original C&NW route now terminates in Rockford since the segment between Rockford and Freeport has been abandoned. It is easy to find the treelines and land scars of the route east of US-20.

1939 Aerial Photo from ILHAP

I switched to a 1939 aerial to see how it ran past the curves in the river. Knowing where it ran, you can still see a pier of its bridge and a "groove" in a stand of trees where it curved and ran north of IC's route, past the Union Depot and terminated at a set of buildings that is now a parking lot. The yellow line indicates the C&NW route.

From 1854, the IC used the C&NW for traffic between Galena and Chicago. By the 1880s they decided they were loosing too much business. Furthermore Wisconsin was growing rapidly and they wanted to directly tap into that market. So in July of 1886 IC charted the Chicago, Madison & Northern. The blue lines indicate the IC spokes built by CM&N --- one goes east to Chicago starting at the East Junction and another goes north to Madison, WI, starting at the West Junction. Another IC spoke, Freeport, Dodgeville & Northern, branched off the Madison spoke north of Red Oak, IL and is off the color coded map.

The Milwaukee Road had a branch that ran from Kittredge on their east/west mainline through Freeport to Rockton on a branch that went north of Rockford. The green line shows its route through town including a crossing of the river. You can see a closeup of the south side in the East Junction map. (Update: I had forgotten that the Milwaukee also came through this town until I came across this posting in a Milwaukee group. A silver lining of floods is that people take pictures of railroad infrastructure --- Milwaukee's depot and freight house. Railfans generally take pictures of just locomotives.)

In the 1980s, Chicago Central and Pacific bought the west part of the charter line and the east part of the CM&N. These two spokes are now owned by the CN because the IC bought the route back from CC&P in 1996.

 

John Cook posted
Freeport, Illinois Chamber of Commerce 1925.

Rory Peterson posted two photos with the comment:

Continuing the Freeport views: -A postcard view of a flooded Milwaukee Road.

-Chicago and North Western C-6 engine 99, Schenectady 1893. Scrapped on 11-13-1928./ McConnell Area Historical Society collection

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