Wisconsin's railroads had been built just in time. When the Southern states closed the Mississippi River to traffic at the beginning of the Civil War, those railroads carried the trade of the upper Mississippi to the East, supplying produce, materials, and cash from exported wheat, all of which aided the war effort. They also helped to send Wisconsin's soldiers to the Southern battlefields and to bring those that survived home again. With a reorganized capital structure, bountiful crops, and war contracts, Wisconsin's railroads were finally able to repay their construction debts.
With the war, Wisconsin's railroads began a twenty-year period of consolidation. The prices paid for failed railroads were relatively low, and those buying them recognized that economies of scale made larger rail systems more profitable. They saw that Wisconsin needed a unified rail network to be able to compete in interstate trade. Those railroads originating in Milwaukee were acquired by the Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway Company, organized from the western division of the La Crosse and Milwaukee on May 8, 1863, and those originating or tied to Chicago were acquired by the Chicago and North Western Railway Company. The pioneer companies that were acquired by the Milwaukee & St. Paul were as follows:
On January 21, 1861, the Milwaukee & Mississippi was deeded to the Milwaukee & Prairie du Chien Railway Company, organized by the purchasers of the Milwaukee & Mississippi three days previously. The Milwaukee and Prairie du Chien was sold on December 31, 1867, to the Milwaukee & St. Paul.
The Milwaukee and Watertown and the Watertown and Madison railroads had been acquired by the Milwaukee, Watertown and Baraboo Valley Railroad Company, which changed its name to the Milwaukee and Western on March 16, 1861. This company was deeded to the Milwaukee & St. Paul on May 8, 1863.
The La Crosse and Milwaukee's western division, between Portage and La Crosse, was reorganized into the Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway Company in 1863. Its eastern division, between Milwaukee and Portage, was operated by the Milwaukee & Minnesota Railroad Company, which was acquired by the Milwaukee & St. Paul in March 1868.
The Milwaukee and Horicon was purchased by the Milwaukee & St. Paul on June 23, 1863. The Ripon and Wolf River was purchased by the Milwaukee & St. Paul on October 3, 1863.
The Western Union Railroad Company, successor of the Racine and Mississippi, was leased by the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul in 1879 (it would be purchased on September 1, 1901). The Milwaukee & St. Paul had added Chicago to its name in 1874.
Finally, on September 29, 1880, the Mineral Point Railroad Company was deeded to the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul.
By 1900 the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul had pushed westward into the Dakotas, and five years later it began building its Pacific extension to Puget Sound, which it finished in 1909. The company reorganized in 1927, changing its name to the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific Railway Company, commonly referred to as the “Milwaukee Road.”
In 1970 America's railroad passenger lines were reduced in number and those remaining, including the Milwaukee Road's Chicago-Puget Sound “Olympian,” were relegated to Amtrak. In 1985 the company became bankrupt, and its Wisconsin lines were acquired by the Soo and Canadian Pacific railroad companies.
The pioneer companies that were acquired by the Chicago and North Western were as follows:
The Milwaukee & Chicago and the Chicago and Milwaukee railroads merged in 1863, taking the name Chicago and Milwaukee. This meant that passengers were finally able to travel between the two cities without changing trains at the state line. The Chicago and Milwaukee was leased by the Chicago and North Western in 1866, and purchased by that company in 1883.1
The Sheboygan and Fond du Lac, successor to the Sheboygan and Mississippi, was acquired by the Chicago and North Western in 1879. By that time it had extended the original road from Glenbeulah to Fond du Lac, Ripon, and Princeton.
The Chicago and North Western Railway Company extended its Chicago-Oshkosh line northward to Appleton and Green Bay in 1861. It also acquired the Kenosha, Rockford and Rock Island line in January 1864.
The Galena and Chicago Union Railroad merged with the Chicago and North Western on June 2, 1864. The new company kept the name Chicago and North Western. With 860 miles of track, the merger made the new company the largest railroad in the world.
The Beloit and Madison completed its line to Madison in August 1864 and shortly thereafter became the Beloit Division of the Chicago and North Western Railway.
The Chicago and North Western Railway Company survived, with several reorganizations, until it was sold to the Union Pacific Railroad Company in 1995.2
Wisconsin's railroad pioneers lived out their lives in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
PIONEERS OF THE 1830S
Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, who visited the lead region in 1831, discovered the source of the Mississippi River at Itasca Lake in 1832. He was appointed superintendent of Michigan's Indian Agency in 1836 and wrote a six-volume reference guide on Indian tribes published in several volumes between 1847 and 1857. Schoolcraft died on December 10, 1864, in Washington, D.C.
Colonel Henry Dodge, Wisconsin's territorial governor from 1836 to 1841 and again from 1846 to 1848, and United States Senator from 1848 to 1852, retired in 1857 and moved to Burlington, Iowa, where he died on June 19, 1867, at the age of eighty-four.
James Doty, who obtained Wisconsin's first railroad charter on December 3, 1836, for his La Fontaine railroad, was territorial governor from 1841 to 1845, and became director of the Wisconsin and Superior in 1857. In 1861 he was appointed Indian Agent in Utah Territory and in 1863 became the governor of that territory, where he died shortly after.
Solomon Juneau, founder and first mayor of Milwaukee, opened a store in Theresa, Wisconsin, in 1848, and moved there with his family in 1852. Juneau died while attending a government payment of annuities to the Menomonee Indians on their Keshena reservation on November 14, 1856. He was sixty-three years old.3
Increase Lapham, chief engineer of the Milwaukee and Rock River Canal, became well known as Wisconsin's first scientist. In 1836, his first year in Wisconsin, he published a book titled A Catalogue of Plants and Shells Found in the Vicinity of Milwaukee. Over the years Lapham authored some eighty more titles, served as president of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin from 1862 to 1871, was instrumental in establishing the national weather service, and was Wisconsin's official chief geologist from 1873 to 1875. He died September 14, 1875.
DIRECTORS OF THE MILWAUKEE & MISSISSIPPI
William A. Barstow, director from 1852 to 1855 and governor of Wisconsin in 1854 and 1855, raised a cavalry regiment at the beginning of the Civil War and served as the regiment's colonel. His health failing, he spent most of the war in hospitals. Barstow never fully recovered his health before he died on December 13, 1865, at the age of fifty-two.
Edward H. Brodhead, superintendent and chief engineer from 1852 to 1856 and president of the company in 1857, retired the following year to attend to his business interests. He became president of Milwaukee's Farmers and Millers Bank in 1865 and later of the First National Bank. Brodhead died December 20, 1890, at the age of eighty-one.
John Catlin, president of the Milwaukee & Mississippi from 1852 to 1861, became vice president of the company's successor, the Milwaukee and Prairie du Chien line, a post he held until 1863. He retired to Elizabeth, New Jersey, where he died August 4, 1874, at the age of seventy-one.
Nelson Dewey, first governor of the state of Wisconsin from 1848 to 1852, and director of the Milwaukee & Mississippi from 1855 to 1861, was active in many other railroad companies, notably the Potosi & Dodgeville, the Southern Wisconsin, the Northern Pacific, the Western Wisconsin, the Platteville & Calamine, and the Military Ridge & Grant County. Dewey lost badly in the financial panic of 1873. He resumed his legal practice until his death in 1889.
Hercules Dousman, director from 1853 until 1861, was one of Wisconsin's wealthiest men. He served as a director of the Milwaukee and Prairie du Chien from 1861 to 1866. He spent his declining years on his large Prairie du Chien estate, giving lavish parties and entertaining distinguished visitors. He died in Prairie du Chien on September 12, 1868.
Ashael Finch Jr., who was named president of Kilbourn's breakaway faction of the Milwaukee and Mississippi company in January 1852, stayed on as a director through 1861. Finch was an abolitionist, was active in the temperance movement, and ran for mayor of Milwaukee in 1867. He died April 4, 1883, at the age of seventy-four.
Joseph Goodrich, director from 1852 to 1861, was an abolitionist and station-master on the underground railroad at Milton, helping runaway slaves escape to Canada. He died in Milton, the village he founded, in 1867.
Edward D. Holton, director from 1849 to 1861, was an active abolitionist for whom Holton, Kansas, was named. He unsuccessfully ran for governor for the Free Soil Party in 1853 and was president of Milwaukee's Farmers' and Millers' Bank from 1854 to 1863. During the Civil War he served as state allotment officer with Wisconsin soldiers in the field. Holton spent his last years traveling. He died in Savannah, Georgia, on April 21, 1892, at the age of seventy-seven.
Byron Kilbourn, president of the Milwaukee and Mississippi until 1852, then president of the La Crosse and Milwaukee, retired from railroading in 1857. In 1860, with real estate holdings and a flouring mill in Milwaukee, Kilbourn was the fourth-wealthiest person in Milwaukee. In 1868 he moved to Jacksonville, Florida, to receive treatment for rheumatism. He died there on September 16, 1870. In the 1990s, the Historic Milwaukee organization brought his remains back to Milwaukee.
Alexander Mitchell, director from 1849 through 1854 and again in 1858, became president of the Milwaukee & St. Paul in 1865. Over the next sixteen years, the Milwaukee & St. Paul under Mitchell absorbed other companies until it had over five thousand miles of track in seven states. Mitchell died on April 19, 1887. His grandson, Billy Mitchell, was a famed aviator for whom Milwaukee's botanical domes are named.
Alexander Randall, who drafted the Milwaukee and Waukesha charter and, as governor of Wisconsin, initiated the investigation of the La Crosse and Milwaukee, was reelected to the governorship in 1859. He vigorously organized the state for participation in the Civil War and was appointed United States Postmaster General by President Andrew Johnson after the war. Randall retired to practice law in Elmyra, New York, where he died in 1872.
John H. Tweedy, director in 1850, 1852, and 1858 and leader of the movement that ousted Kilbourn from the presidency in 1852, retired from active business and politics in the 1860s and continued to live in Milwaukee, where he died at the age of seventy-seven on November 12, 1891.
George H. Walker, director from 1852 to 1860 and two-term mayor of Milwaukee in 1851 and 1853, organized Milwaukee's mule-powered streetcar service in 1859. He died on September 20, 1866, at the age of fifty-four.
Erastus B. Wolcott, M.D., director from 1849 until 1861, became Wisconsin's surgeon general during the Civil War. He served as vice president of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin in 1861, and became manager of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers after 1866. He married Dr. Laura Ross in 1869 and championed equal rights for women in the medial profession. He died in Milwaukee on January 5, 1880.
OTHER EMPLOYEES OF THE MILWAUKEE & MISSISSIPPI
John Bailie, master car builder at Waukesha in 1850, built railroad cars for the company and its successors, the Milwaukee and Prairie du Chien and the Milwaukee & St. Paul, over a period of thirty years.4
Edwin Bridgeman, the first train conductor in Wisconsin, left the Milwaukee & Mississippi for the La Crosse and Milwaukee in 1853. He worked for the La Crosse until shortly before his death on October 17, 1859.
Joseph Cochrane, the first passenger train locomotive engineer in Wisconsin, left the Milwaukee & Mississippi about 1853 to engage in brick making. He ran street-sprinkling wagons in Milwaukee until 1877. Cochrane died March 19, 1879.5
Benjamin Edgerton, constructing engineer from 1851 until 1861, for whom Edgerton, Wisconsin, is named, continued with the successor Milwaukee and Prairie du Chien in the early 1860s. He later became chief engineer of the McGregor & Western Railway in Iowa, and established the city of Cresco, Iowa. The town of Edgerton, Kansas, was named after him during his tenure as chief engineer of the Kansas Southern Railroad. In the early 1870s Edgerton became chief engineer for the Milwaukee and Northern Railroad, building between Milwaukee and Green Bay on many of the Indian trails he had trod in 1835 after first coming to Milwaukee. Edgerton died in Chicago on December 9, 1886, and was buried in Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee.
John C. Fox, the young engineer who brought the first train into Janesville, later became foreman of the Janesville roundhouse. He was then made master mechanic with supervision over the shops in Janesville, Rockford, Beloit, Monroe, and Mineral Point, a post he held until 1909, when a sudden illness forced him to retire after fifty-eight years of active service. In 1919 Mr. Fox suffered from a broken hip, from which time he was confined to his home. In March 1921 the Janesville Gazette featured the following article:
President of St. Paul greets John Fox, 94, oldest living employee
In his little home at 118 Madison Street where from his bed he can look out at the passing trains, 94-year old John C. Fox , oldest living employee of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway, is happy. He has felt another touch of human kindness, greater than all that have gone before. His 69 years of loyal service as a railroader were rewarded Monday. None other than H. E. Byrnam, president of the St. Paul, called upon him. It was the tribute from a great heart to a faithful worker, and it touched the aged man. Tears of joy dimmed for a moment the sparkle of his blue eyes…. It was payment for the labor of a lifetime loyally done. Perhaps no more touching scene has been enacted in Janesville. Lying upon his bed, the grand old man replied to the president's greeting with the satisfied statement: “I wondered, sir, if you would find time to see me.” The formality of introduction was over. An immediate friendship was cemented, and as friends of old, the chief of one of the biggest railroad systems in the country and the man who holds the distinction of having run the first St. Paul engine into Janesville chatted about “their” railroad. History they related; anecdotes they told, and jokes they swapped…. “What we need today,” says Mr. Fox, “is more love of our Saviour, more love of our country and more loyalty for our boss and our work.” As he concluded, there was a murmur of “Amens” from the distinguished visitors.6
John C. Fox died in June of the following year, 1922.
Edwin Kittredge, who built Wisconsin's first railroad passenger car, left the Milwaukee & Mississippi to work for the La Crosse and Milwaukee in 1853. He would build railroad cars for that company and its successors for the next thirty years.7
Walter Kittredge, master car builder at Waukesha, was superintendent of the La Crosse and Milwaukee from 1854 to 1859. In 1865 he became the station agent at Portage for the successor Milwaukee & St. Paul. He died on March 19, 1867.8
Sherburn S. Merrill, foreman of a section crew in 1850 and freight conductor in 1851, served as assistant superintendent from 1853 to 1857. Between 1857 and 1862 he was superintendent of the Milwaukee, Watertown and Baraboo Valley line. He moved to Minnesota for his health, but in July 1865 returned to Milwaukee to become the general manager of the Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway, a post he would hold for twenty years. In 1881 the city of Merrill, Wisconsin, was named for him. He died on February 8, 1885, at the age of sixty-six.
James Stickney, depot agent at Mazomanie in 1856, continued in that position for many years. He was a staunch Republican, a supporter of Lincoln, an investor in real estate, a breeder of racehorses, and, for a time, village president. In 1907, when he was seventy-nine years old, Stickney was recognized as the oldest railroad agent in the United States. He would serve another three years in that capacity. The company named Stickney, South Dakota, after him.
William B. Strong, station agent at Monroe in 1857, was transferred to Janes-ville in 1858, where he would serve as station agent for seven years. Strong then worked for the McGregor & Western in 1865; the Chicago & North Western from 1866 to 1870; the Burlington & Missouri River from 1870 to 1872, and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy from 1872 to 1878. In 1878 Strong joined the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, of which he became president in 1881. Under his eleven-year administration, the road grew from 637 miles to an incredible 9,000 miles. In 1889 Strong retired and returned to Beloit, where he aided building projects for churches and hospitals.9
PIONEERS ASSOCIATED WITH OTHER LAKE MICHIGAN-MISSISSIPPI RIVER RAILROADS
Jacob Linsley Bean, former financial agent for the Milwaukee & Mississippi and president of the La Crosse and Milwaukee in 1853, began iron mining and smelting in 1854 at Iron Ridge. He died on May 8 of the following year at the age of forty-six.
Jairus C. Fairchild was Wisconsin's first state treasurer in 1848 and Madison's first mayor in 1856. He was a director and then president of the Watertown and Madison in 1857, and the disputed receiver of the Milwaukee and Horicon railroad from 1860 until his death at the age of sixty on July 18, 1862.
Zalmon G. Simmons, president of the Kenosha, Rockford & Rock Island Railroad in 1860 and 1861, was also president of the Northwestern Telegraph Company of Kenosha. In 1884 he became a director of the Western Union Company. In 1889 Simmons organized the Manitou and Pike's Peak Railroad Company in Colorado, and two years later saw the completion of the cog-railway to the top of Pike's Peak. Simmons was president of the First National Bank of Kenosha from 1871 to 1909. He was best known for organizing the Northwestern Wire Mattress Company of Kenosha, which eventually became the Simmons Manufacturing Company, one of the largest producers of wire mattresses, steel springs, and iron and steel beds in the world. Simmons died in Kenosha on February 11, 1910, at the age of eighty-one.
Moses M. Strong, president of the Mineral Point Railroad and attorney for the La Crosse and Milwaukee, led Wisconsin's “copperhead” Democrats, who were critical of the Lincoln administration, during the Civil War. Strong served as president of the State Bar Association form 1878 to 1893 and as vice president of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin from 1871 until his death, at the age of eighty-four, in 1894.
PIONEERS ASSOCIATED WITH CHICAGO-CRIENTED RAILROADS
Edwin F. Johnson, an engineer from Vermont who wrote the book Railroad to the Pacific, Northern Route in 1853, became the chief engineer of the Chicago, St. Paul, and Fond du Lac in 1855. In 1867 Johnson was appointed chief engineer of the Northern Pacific Railroad.
John B. Macy, promoter for the Rock River Valley Union and a United States Congressman from 1853 to 1855, drowned on September 24, 1856, after attempting to jump into a lifeboat from the steamer Niagara, which burned on Lake Michigan off Port Washington.
William B. Ogden, president of the new Chicago and North Western in 1859, extended the company's lines to Green Bay by 1862 and engineered its merger with the Galena and Chicago Union in 1864. In September of 1862 he became the first president of the Union Pacific Railroad, a post from which he resigned after eight months. Ogden retired from the North Western on June 4, 1868. In 1871 he suffered over two million dollars in losses in the Chicago and Peshtigo fires. He returned to New York, where he died on August 3, 1877.
A. Hyatt Smith, president of the Rock River Valley Union Railroad from 1850 to 1854, retired to manage his Janesville and Chicago real estate holdings. He operated the Hyatt House in Janesville, one of the largest and most luxurious hotels in the West, until it burned down in 1867. Smith continued to practice law in Janesville, where he passed away on October 17, 1892.10
John Bice Turner, president of the Beloit and Madison from 1852 until 1855, purchased the company in 1862. Turner represented the Galena and Chicago Union in its merger with the Chicago and North Western in 1864 and subsequently served as a director of the North Western.
Leonard J. Farwell, president of the Beloit and Madison and a stockholder in the Watertown and Madison, was ruined by the financial the panic of 1857. Far-well was a state assemblyman in 1860 and served as an examiner in the U.S. Patent Office from 1863 to 1870. He was credited with saving Vice President Andrew Johnson's life by warning him of a possible attack on the night that President Lincoln was assassinated. Farwell moved to Chicago, then to Grant City, Missouri, where he engaged in banking and real estate until his death on April 11, 1889.
LOCOMOTIVES
No. 1., Wisconsin's first locomotive, which was purchased by Kilbourn for the Milwaukee and Mississippi in 1850, was subsequently designated as the Iowa, the Bob Ellis, and the No. 71, serving the Milwaukee & Mississippi, Milwaukee and Prairie du Chien, and Milwaukee & St. Paul companies before it was put out of commission in 1886. Its boiler was used to heat the round house in Waukesha as late as 1898.
The Spring Green, Milwaukee & Mississippi's engine No. 40, was one of seventeen locomotives purchased from Breese, Kneeland & Company of New York in 1856. It became No. 105 on the Milwaukee & St. Paul line and was sold in 1889 to the El Paso & Southwestern Railroad Company, becoming that company's No 1. until it was retired in 1909. We have the following account from a Mr. L. A. Curtis:
In 1912 … I was approaching the railroad one night in El Paso when I saw before me a little locomotive of very familiar outline. Surely those high set slanting cylinders, those big drivers and the contour of the dome and sand box spelled Breeze Kneeland, 1857. The little engine was not on the road but sat within a railing on a grass plot, she was painted maroon, striped and lettered in gold, bore the number one, and a brass plate proclaimed her to be the first locomotive of the El Paso and South-Western and the first locomotive to enter Bisbee, Arizona. Sure enough, there was the Breeze Kneeland badge plate on the steam-chest, dated 1857. She had the plain wooden cab without panel below the windows used by the Chicago Milwaukee and St. Paul in the seventies and the old St. Paul tender with a heavy wooden frame and a tool box behind, the St. Paul headlight brackets of short box days kept in use over the extension front. Yes, there in the dark on the Rio Grande was one of the old Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Breeze Kneelands that used to pull the Rockford passenger out of Madison, Wisconsin.11
The Spring Green was placed in the Centennial Museum in El Paso, Texas, in 1960, where it can be seen today. The Spring Green is one of only twenty surviving 4-4-0 locomotives (a car with four wheels on the leading truck; four large, driving wheels; and no trailing wheels-the most common configuration on nineteenth century locomotives). There were approximately 25,000 of these locomotives built in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The Winnebago, the Rock River Valley Union's first locomotive, was changed to standard gauge in 1859 by the successor Chicago and North Western. The Winnebago was serving as a switch-engine in 1880 at the Green Bay yards, having more years of continuous service at the time than any other locomotive in the state.12
BUILDINGS AND OTHER STRUCTURES
Unfortunately, very few pre-Civil War railroad stations are left in Wisconsin. Sadly, Wisconsin's oldest railroad station, the Milwaukee & Mississippi's Waukesha station, was demolished in the 1990s to make way for a parking lot. The Milwaukee & Mississippi depots at Mazomanie and Boscobel have survived, as has the Mineral Point depot at Mineral Point.
The La Crosse and Milwaukee's tunnel at Tunnel City was finished in 1861. It was used for only thirteen years because the rumble of the trains caused sand-falls. A new, higher, more solidly built tunnel with a brick lining was built alongside the old one in 1874 and 1875. That tunnel is still in use today.13
RAILROAD BEDS, CUTS, AND EMBANKMENTS
We finish our tome with the humble, lowly, often-overlooked railroad bed-the smooth, graded beds of earth and gravel on which tracks are laid. Railroad beds, especially where they pass through cuts in hills or on embankments over low areas, are the most common and visible remains of Wisconsin's early railroads. Like Native American burial mounds, they hold their shape and seem to defy weather and time. Driving through the undulating landscape west of Madison on U.S. Highway 14, one sees mile after mile of the old Milwaukee & Mississippi roadway staying level alongside the highway as one's car goes up and down. Built in 1855 by men using picks, shovels, wheelbarrows, horses, oxen, and plows, it has had regularly scheduled trains running over it for over 150 years. There are many other roadbeds like it, some still in use and others long abandoned, throughout southern Wisconsin.
These roadbeds are the permanent and unique legacy of Wisconsin's railroad pioneers-pioneers who, although motivated by profit, knew that their work would result in better lives for their families, their communities, and the future citizens of Wisconsin. One wonders how many of them, especially the axe men, the grubbers, the diggers, and the graders who worked on railways for seventy-five cents or a dollar a day, imagined that their labor would outlast both their century and the next.