How this History Changing Innovation Built the Windy City

2. The Galena and Chicago Union Railroad

Chartered in 1836, the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad was the first to connect Chicago with another city. Its name is a bit of a misnomer, since it never reached Galena. Its furthest distance west was Freeport. Construction began in 1848, and the first westbound train ever departing from Chicago left on October 25, 1848. The locomotive Pioneer, a used Baldwin steam engine, pulled the first train. By 1851 the railroad reached Rockford, and Freeport connected to Chicago in 1853. There construction by the Galena and Chicago ended. Construction to Galena was taken over by the Illinois Central Railroad in 1854.

During the period of construction, the population of the city of Chicago more than tripled. The railroad leading to the west and the new canal created a shipping hub. By 1862 the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad reached Council Bluffs, Iowa, by leasing the Cedar Rapids and Missouri Railroad. Following the Civil War the railroad connected to the Transcontinental Railroad. The produce of the midwestern farms found its way to the Chicago waterfront, for shipping to the east via the lakes, or to the south via the canal and Mississippi River systems. Finished products from the east and the south found their way to Chicago, where the growing city put them to use in homes and factories.

3. Connecting with the east

During the 1840s and 1850s, railroad companies experienced explosive growth throughout the eastern and midwestern states. An alphabet soup of railroad companies emerged, bearing the initials of their names, based on their major destinations or routes. Railroads formed, merged, and connected cities, with reaching Chicago a common goal of many. The Illinois connected to Detroit, Lansing, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and to the north in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Railcars carried wheat and grain from the north and west, as well as livestock. Cattle and hogs arrived in the city, where they were kept in ever-growing stockyards before shipping to eastern destinations.

Most of the railroads emanating to the north and west of Chicago established their corporate headquarters in the city, in separate passenger terminals. The Galena and Chicago Union’s terminal and operations center stood near the canal, on Canal Street. Its operation, and those of its competitors, drove the growth of several businesses. Chicago became a major railroad manufacturing center, building railcars for freight and passengers. During the years leading up to the Civil War railroads developed rail marshaling yards for the several companies serving Chicago, each with their own stockyards, terminals, and support areas.

4. Becoming the meatpacking capital of the United States

In 1840 the city of Cincinnati led the nation in the production of processed and packed pork. Hogs were driven to the city from Ohio and Indiana, and shipped by barges and steamboats from Kentucky. In Cincinnati, pork processing created byproducts used in the manufacture of soaps, candles, leather goods, and fertilizers. In the absence of refrigeration, hogs were slaughtered and processed in the cold months, with much of the meat cured by salting and smoking. It was then shipped down the Ohio and Mississippi, or across Ohio using the canals built by the state.

Chicago took over the role of the nation’s leading meatpacker during the American Civil War. The railroads moved processed meat at a faster speed than canals and steamboats. Contracts to provide salted beef and pork to the Union Armies, and access to animals from the west, created a boom in the meatpacking industry in Chicago. Insulated railcars cooled with ice, developed shortly after the Civil War, allowed beef butchered and shipped to consumers fresh. Cattle formerly delivered to eastern customers on the hoof for local processing were supplanted by slaughtered animals, ready for additional processing by butchers and food suppliers.

5. Union Stockyards

Before the American Civil War, the five major railroads serving Chicago each had their own stockyards, where arriving cattle were held prior to shipping to eastern markets. Other stockyards held pigs, other sheep. The Illinois Central and Michigan Central railroads jointly owned the largest, built along the shore of Lake Michigan between 29^th and 35^th street. To avoid driving animals through the city streets, the railroads placed the stockyards near their facilities. Meatpacking companies purchased their animals from the stockyards, as did butcher shops and other consumers. During the Civil War, a large number of animals moved about the city indicating the need for a change to the system.

In 1864 the Union Stockyards were designed and built upon a marshy area south of the city. Nine railroad companies joined forces to purchase the land and build the stockyards, with all of them having access to the facilities. The stockyards included fifteen miles of rail tracks, which connected them to the main lines serving the city. The stockyards became a growing city of its own, annexed into the city of Chicago five years after construction began. By then it contained pens which could hold 75,000 hogs, 22,000 sheep, and 21,000 cattle simultaneously. It also contained offices, saloons, restaurants, and other services supporting the community which expanded around it. By 1870 the Union Stockyards processed over two million animals per year.

6. Rebuilding the city after 1871

In early October, 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed over three square miles within the city’s center and north side. Contrary to legend, Mrs. O’Leary’s cow likely did not start the fire, though the damage was indeed extensive. Relief efforts from outside the city began before the smoldering ended, brought to the scene by the railroads and lake steamers. The same transportation systems responsible for the city’s rapid growth brought the means for its recovery following the disaster. Army troops were carried by rail to enforce martial law and control looting. Medical supplies, clothing, and food for the citizens rendered homeless arrived by rail.

The destruction caused by the fire did not hamper the city’s continued activity as a rail and shipping hub, especially for the Union Stockyards and the meatpacking companies within and around the area. The amount of meat processed in the yards continued to increase as the rest of the city rebuilt. Capital generated by the yards helped fund much of the rebuilding of the city’s damaged infrastructure. Lumber, steel, brick, and stone needed to rebuild much of Chicago arrived in the city largely by rail, as did an influx of laborers and construction trades. At the same time, cattle, hogs, sheep, and grain from feedlot farmers arrived at the Union Stockyards as the city recovered from the fire.

7. The Chicago and South Side Rapid Transit Railroad

In June, 1892, four coaches pulled by a steam locomotive traveled from 39^th street to the newly built Congress Street Terminal. Several dozen passengers rode on the ceremonial trip, the first offered by the Chicago and South Side Rapid Transit Railroad. The following year the line extended to 63^rd Street and the site of the World Columbian Exposition, where it terminated at the Transportation Building. That same year the Lake Street Elevated Railroad began operation. In 1895 the Metropolitan West Side Elevated opened for business, the first commercial railroad in the United States powered by electric traction motors.

By the end of the decade, the city’s connecting “L” railways were all run on electric traction motors, and the South Side line introduced all the motors in the connected cars under the control of the motorman driving the train. In the first decade of the 20^th century, the “L” trains were the single largest consumer of electricity in the city of Chicago. The Northwest Elevated began operations in 1900 in the urban areas, though the building of stations and other sections of the line continued for several years. The commuter rail lines operated independently, for the most part, until consolidation began in 1911. In 1924 several were included in the formation of the Chicago Rapid Transit Company.

8. The LaSalle Street Station

The first railroad station erected at 414 La Salle Street in Chicago opened for business in May, 1852. It served the Northern Indiana and Chicago Railroad, later adding service to the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad. The station proved to be too small to accommodate passenger demand and a new station on the site opened in 1866. The Great Fire consumed that station, though it was rebuilt. Another station opened on the site in 1903. It served several railroads, among them the New York Central, the Michigan Central, and the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne, and Chicago Railway. Commuter trains also connected with the LaSalle Street Station, and several westbound trains operated out of the station.

The famed 20^th Century Limited which connected New York and Chicago used the LaSalle Street Station until 1968. The station became a symbol of the city and a movie star, appearing in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest and again in the Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor film, Silver Streak. The Rock Island-Southern Pacific train Golden State Limited operated from LaSalle from its inception in 1902 until 1968. Metra’s (Chicago commuter rail) Rock Island District is served by another station on the LaSalle Street site in the 21^st century. The site has been serving travelers in Chicago for nearly 150 years, a major cog in the city’s transportation system.

9. Great Central Station – Central Station

In 1856 the Illinois Central Railroad opened Great Central Station, at the time the largest building in downtown Chicago. Above the depot, which stood on Water Street, the Illinois Central maintained its corporate offices. Behind the depot were eight separate rail lines covered by a train shed. The station featured a masonry façade on Water Street, with the rest of the structure built mostly of wood. Though it suffered severe damage during the Great Fire it remained open for business, receiving trains carrying much of the emergency aid sent to the city. The wooden train shed, destroyed by the fire, was never rebuilt.

The predecessors to the Big Four (the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railway) and the railroad itself all used Great Central Station. An idea of the impact of transportation in Chicago can be inferred from the number of trains serviced in the station by the end of the 19^th century. In 1892 the station serviced a peak of 100 intercity passenger trains per day, though it was but one of six major train stations in the city. In 1893 the Illinois Central opened Central Station, and demolished the Great Central Station beginning that same year.

10. Wells Street Station

The land on which sits Chicago’s Merchandise Mart once featured the Wells Street Station. Built by the Chicago and North Western railway and opening in 1881, the station serviced passenger trains for thirty years before the Chicago and North Western replaced it, opening another terminal on the opposite side of the North Branch of the Chicago River. The older station remained in use as a freight terminal, and the Merchandise Mart used the air rights above the station when built in the late 1920s. The Merchandise Mart opened in 1930, with a new freight station built to serve its needs.

Wells Street Station provided an important link for residents of the city’s suburbs, arriving in the city daily for work. In 1893 the station serviced about 200 trains per day, accommodating an average of 32,000 passengers. The five-story station, which also provided office space for railroad executives and workers, stood before a train shed which covered 12 tracks. Wells Street Station serviced the trains of its parent company exclusively, the only one of the six main stations in Chicago used by a single railroad. Its central tower became an early Chicago landmark, rising 188 feet into the air and featuring a large clock on each of its four sides beneath its steeple.

11. Dearborn Station

When it opened in 1885, Dearborn Station featured steeply pitched roofs above its three stories of usable space, and a twelve-story clock tower. During a rebuild in the early 1920s, the steep roofs and dormers were removed. Ten tracks, protected by a large train shed, accommodated trains arriving and departing. The amenities within the station included one of Fred Harvey’s restaurants, with the famed Harvey Girls waiting on passengers and others. At its height, the station serviced 146 trains per day, including some of the famous trains from the Golden Age of Railroading.

The Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe’s Super Chief used Dearborn Station as its Chicago destination, as did the railroad’s El Capitan and Chief. The Chesapeake and Ohio’s Pere Marquette began using Dearborn station in the 1960s. Canada’s Grand Trunk Western trains also used Dearborn Station when arriving in Chicago. Dearborn Station ceased operating as a railroad station when Amtrak discontinued operations there in 1971. The tracks which formerly provided workers and commerce to the city are now the site of Dearborn Park, and the station itself serves as commercial and retail space.

12. Grand Central Station

Living up to its name, Grand Central Station featured architecture and furnishings designed to reflect grandeur. Strategically located to take advantage of the bustling traffic on the city’s lakefront, the station opened in December 1890. Visitors were awed by the exterior extravagance, which included a 247″ clock tower at its northeast corner. The interior featured marble floors in its waiting areas, and marble Corinthian columns, a large fireplace, and stained-glass windows. The train shed was built of steel and glass, covering six tracks and platforms over 500 feet in length. One of the largest train sheds in the world at the time of construction, it remained an engineering and architectural marvel throughout its existence.

Despite its architectural and decorative grandeur, Grand Central Station never reached the standing of its competing stations in terms of intercity or commuter traffic. At its peak, it serviced less than 50 trains per day. It served several famous trains, including the Baltimore and Ohio’s Capitol Limited, which connected Chicago to the nation’s capital. By the early 1960s, only ten intercity trains arrived and departed daily, six of them operated by the Baltimore and Ohio. In 1969 all passenger service moved to other Chicago stations and by 1971 demolition of the former architectural marvel began. Its contribution to Chicago, both esthetically and commercially, remains largely forgotten.

13. The Port of Chicago

Chicago’s river port bustled with activity in the 19^th century, and services to support the port appeared along the river and lakefront. Grain ships arriving from Buffalo, Cleveland, and other lake ports delivered their cargoes to giant silos which towered above the many slips, inlets, and canals cut along the river. Lumber ships stocked the lumber yards along the railways, from whence trains carried the lumber to newly developed cities and towns to the west. Weather determined the shipping season’s length, which ran from April to November. Ship traffic was extensive, with arriving ships under sail needing a tugboat to approach the port facilities and discharge their cargoes. A harbormaster steamed through the shipping attempting to maintain order and route traffic.

Once on the river, the tugs were at the mercy of the bridge keepers who operated the swing bridges carrying pedestrian and wagon traffic over the waterways. Tugs sounded their steam whistles for the bridges to open, while surface traffic demanded crossing right-of-way. Bribes from tugboat owners to the bridge keepers sometimes ensured their boats’ priority. Other tugs simply ignored the signals that the bridge was closing to water traffic and attempted to run through the opening, drawing the wrath of the bridge keeper, expressed in a shower of stones or coal. In 1868 the city ordered the construction of tunnels beneath the waterways to replace the swing bridges. Heavily laden boats are often grounded on the roofs of the tunnels during low water.

14. The lumber merchants

Lumber arrived in Chicago via ships and trains, stored on the city’s west side while awaiting sale and shipment. Merchants and brokers purchased the limber on arrival in the port, and sold it to customers, sometimes in the city, but most often to the developing towns to the west. At any one time, an inventory of up to 400 million board feet stocked the yards. Trains carrying lumber westward returned carrying grain and livestock, which fed Chicago’s Union Stockyards and the meatpackers there. The Chicago River became lined with wharves and piers, boat basins, factories, warehouses, silos, and the community of watermen living and working at the port.

Beyond the waterfront, itself stood the communities and accommodations attendant in any great port of the day. They included offices for freight brokers and salesmen, taverns and saloons, boarding houses, and brothels. The areas immediately around the Chicago River became the centers for vice in the city. Pickpockets, pimps and their prostitutes, and other criminals, roamed the streets day and night. On the west side, most of the laborers worked for the lumbermen, hired by the day to unload lumber ships and stack the cargo in the lumber yards. Further upriver, the same routine applied to hiring men to unload coal, a dirty and often dangerous job.

15. The port in winter

From mid-November to April, when the thaws began, the Port of Chicago lay idle in terms of shipping. Despite being shut down in the winter months, in 1871 Chicago was the busiest port in the United States, measured in ship arrivals. The port serviced more ships than New York, San Francisco, Baltimore, Charleston, Philadelphia and Mobile, combined. During the winter months more than two thousand sailors spent their days of unemployment in the city. Their ships, tied up in the river and boat basins, connected to each other by gangplanks. Some crewmen lived aboard them during the winter months, avoiding the expense of rooming houses and hotels in the city.

The port reached its heyday in the 1870s and 1880s. As ships plying the lakes for commercial trade grew larger, captains preferred to use the Calumet River as their destination. Improvements to the Calumet by the Army Corps of Engineers in the 1880s led to increased development in the region, and grain silos, lumber yards, coal bunkers, and steel mills emerged. Chicago, by then focused on the railroads, found its port gradually reduced, though passenger traffic on the lakes continued to arrive in the city. Plans to expand the port’s facilities in the early 20^th century were abandoned. In 1959 the St. Lawrence Seaway opened, and for the following decade, the Navy Pier supported another shipping boom. Since then commercial shipping at the Port of Chicago declined.

16. The Sanitary and Ship Canal

Opened in 1900, the Sanitary and Ship Canal was a project which included reversing the direction of the flow of the Chicago River. By the late 1870s, community leaders recognized the level of pollution of the Chicago River, which received much of the industrial and human waste generated by the city. One tributary became known as Bubbly Creek, its waters bubbling from the breakdown of the wastes it contained. It continued to bubble throughout the 20^th century. In the 1870s, periods of heavy rain drove polluted water from the river and its creeks into Lake Michigan, from which the city drew its drinking water. In 1889 Chicago created the Municipal Sanitary district and committed to reversing the flow of the Chicago River.

The Canal dug to alter the river’s course ran parallel to the existing Illinois and Michigan Canal to Lockport. By 1900, when the canal was officially opened (by Admiral George Dewey) it did not yet connect to the Des Plaines River, linking Chicago with the Gulf of Mexico via water. It terminated at Lockport. It did not reach the Des Plaines until 1907. Once completed, water flowed from Lake Michigan into the Chicago River, the canal and eventually into the Mississippi River Watershed. The locks and dams of the system restricted the flow of water to levels established by the US Army Corps of Engineers. The canal today bears frequently encountered signs describing the water within as unfit for human contact.

17. Midway Airport

Prior to the end of the First World War, most of the intercity mail ran on railroads. Many trains included Post Office cars, which processed, postmarked, and delivered mail to stations on their routes. Before the war experiments using airplanes to deliver mail created a novelty and a new term – airmail – entered the English language. Nonetheless, the advances in aviation before the war did not support the wide use of airmail, as airplanes simply couldn’t carry very large loads. Aircraft technology advanced rapidly during and after the war, and barnstorming pilots began to supplement their incomes by carrying mail both privately and for the United States Post Office.

Regularly scheduled airmail service in the United States began in May, 1918. In order to include Chicago in the new service, the city needed an airfield. In 1923 the city designated a 320-acre site as the Chicago Air Park. It leased the site three years later, naming it Chicago Municipal Airport. Originally equipped with a single, cinder-paved runway, by 1930 it had four runways, 12 hangars, and over two dozen airplanes. By 1931, when a new passenger terminal opened, the airport staked the claim of being the busiest in the world, operating more than 60,000 flights that year, carrying over 100,000 passengers. La Guardia surpassed it in the claim for the world’s busiest airport in the 1930s, though Midway (renamed for the World War II battle) reclaimed the title in 1948, and kept it for the ensuing dozen years running.

18. O’Hare International Airport

In the 1940s Chicago’s civic leaders recognized the need for a new airport to reduce the congestion at Midway, and increase the number of flights serving the city. In 1945 the Mayor created a Selection Committee to study the region and select a site for the new airport. They chose Orchard Field, where a Douglas Aircraft plant had a field containing four concrete runways and support infrastructure. The following year temporary lights were added to the field, and in 1949 it was named O’Hare for Edward H. O’Hare, a Naval Aviator and Medal of Honor recipient during World War II. In 1955, O’Hare International Airport officially opened to commercial air traffic, with 13 airlines. Over 175,000 passengers flew into and out of the airport during its first year of operation.

In 1960 it surpassed Midway as the world’s busiest airport. It continued to expand throughout the 1960s. The expansion was aided by the construction of an eight-lane freeway connecting downtown Chicago to the terminals, completed in 1960. In 1962 scheduled flights from Midway were transferred to O’Hare, and by the end of that year, more than 10 million passengers used the facilities at O’Hare when travelling to, from, or through Chicago. By 1971 the airport expanded to seven runways, multiple terminals, including one dedicated to international traffic, and additional hangars, maintenance facilities, and other support facilities for travelers and their families.

19. Highways

When Henry Ford inspected the meatpacking plants in Chicago, the automated process of slaughtering, skinning, and butchering cattle and hogs impressed him. Ford noted the work moving to the worker in a continuous line, with each worker performing a small piece of the overall process. He adapted the process to the assembly lines in his automobile plants, and gave much of the credit to the Chicago meatpacking industry. By the 1910s his mass-produced Model T changed the manner in which people commuted and traveled for pleasure. Chicago city planners recognized the need to accommodate automobiles with better roads and streets.

In 1927, at the height of the Roaring Twenties, the Chicago Plan Commission outlined a network of freeways, with limited access, branching out from the city center to its outlying neighborhoods and suburbs. The famous Lake Shore Drive emerged from the plans, and when it opened in 1933 served as a prototype for similar limited access routes in American cities. The Great Depression and World War II impeded progress on the plan, though once the war ended the projects moved forward with a vengeance. Throughout the 1950s, steady progress changed Chicago’s roadways. The better roads with easy access to industries and warehouses carried shipping formerly the province of the railroads, and the convenience of automobile traffic robbed passengers from the railways.

20. Expanding the roads

As the nation began work on the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s, Chicago’s earlier planning and progress gave the city a jump on competitors. Construction projects were many, and freeways and access roads grew around and through Chicago. The Chicago Skyway opened to traffic in 1958. The Kennedy Expressway began carrying traffic between the Northwest Tollway and O’Hare International Airport, connecting the Loop to both, in 1960. It was fully completed the following year. The Dan Ryan Expressway opened in 1961. The Stevenson Expressway, following the right-of-way of the abandoned Illinois and Michigan Canal, fully opened in 1964.

As roads increased in size so did the traffic they carried. Chicago planners used North Lake Shore Drive to experiment with reversible lanes, designed to carry traffic in one direction during peak periods, and reversed to the opposite direction when needed, accommodating morning and evening rush hours. It proved so successful that sections of the Kennedy Expressway adopted the idea. The Dan Ryan eventually added express lanes, bypassing local exits, to accommodate through traffic during peak use. The freeways and limited access roads mimicked the influence on commerce and development originally introduced by the railroads, at the same time stripping them of much of their revenue generating freight and passengers.

21. Pullman

George Pullman used the transportation industry to create a new type of railcar, the Pullman Sleeper, soon known worldwide simply as Pullmans. He also created an entirely new profession – the Pullman Porter – and eventually a town to house and feed the workers at his plant, where his cars were built. Pullman used the Erie Canal packet boats he observed in his youth as the basis for his sleeping cars, which offered comfortable beds, privacy, and elite service from the porters assigned to each car. Pullman hired mostly black males as his porters, and they became a staple in American entertainment and culture for decades, lauded for their superior service.

To house his workers he created one of the first company towns in the United States, where they paid rent to his company, shopped at company stores, and enjoyed company provided entertainment. The town was at first praised for its treatment of its residents, before later economic downturns led Pullman to cut wages without cutting rents and prices in the company store. The 1894 Pullman Strike which followed left the company in disrepute with the rising power of organized labor. Chicago annexed the community as part of a general annexation of several South Side communities. Pullman Sleeper cars, manned with porters, remained in operation into the 1980s, though the company collapsed in 1968.

22. Streetcars

Chicago’s earliest streetcars, pulled by horses or mules, were slow, and the animals added their waste to the debris in the streets, an undesirable situation. By the 1880s, cable drawn streetcars on rails replaced them. By 1887 Chicago boasted the largest cable railway found anywhere in the world. During the same decade, competing cities installed electric-traction-powered streetcars. Chicago began shifting to the more efficient electric trolleys in the 1890s, and completed the conversion of the entire system in 1906. Interurbans – electric railroads with the cars powered for the most part with electric-traction motors, expanded rapidly. By the 1920s it was possible to travel from New York to Chicago entirely on interurbans, using multiple transfers from one company’s lines to another.

The streetcars carried commuters and passengers from intercity and interurban trains to their destinations within the city and its suburbs. They provided connections between the train stations and Midway Airport. By the time of the expansion of O’Hare International, the interurbans were mostly gone, and the streetcars found themselves replaced by buses. The streetcar lines were abandoned one by one, the rails were taken up, and the streets became dominated by the internal combustion engine. Beginning in 1927, when Chicago first began operation of gasoline-powered buses, the street railway system, a decade earlier the largest in the United State, gradually faded away.

23. The railroad supply industry

The railroads did far more than just deliver supplies and people to Chicago, or carry them away to other markets. Before the Civil War, supplying the railroads dominated Chicago’s industrial base. Following the war and well into the 20^th century the industry grew. Chicago was a major manufacturing center of rolling stock for both freight and passenger rail. Both the Illinois Central Railroad and the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy established major repair and maintenance facilities, the former on the South Side and the latter in nearby Aurora. Chicago steel mills manufactured rails. In the 1880s nearly one-third of all rails manufactured in the United States came from Chicago.

The railroads and supporting industries paid well according to the standards of the day. The leading employers in the railroad industry were the rolling stock manufacturers. By 1900, the Pullman Company employed 6,000 workers in the facilities manufacturing their rail cars of all types. The American Car and Foundry, another manufacturer of rolling stock, employed about 1,500 in its Chicago shops. In the 1890s the first all-steel railcars emerged, with several Chicago companies producing cars. Other Chicago area companies produced lamps for locomotives and track signage, furnishings for passenger cars, wheels at the Griffin Wheel Company, and other items necessary for the successful operation of the railroads.

24. Amtrak

By 1971 nearly all of America’s remaining passenger railroads were teetering on the brink of total collapse. Years of declining passenger revenue led to the once-grand trains becoming seedy in appearance, with declines in passenger schedules and services. The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, operating under the name Amtrak, formed to take over most intercity passenger rail services in the United States. The only station served by Amtrak in Chicago, Union Station, became a critical hub for Amtrak. It is the fourth busiest of all of Amtrak’s stations in terms of passenger traffic, after New York’s Grand Central, Penn Station, and Jamaica Station.

At the end of the 20^th century, Union Station serviced about 140,000 passengers per day, though only about 10,000 were from intercity rail. The rest were commuters using Chicago’s Metro trains. Fifteen Amtrak trains servicing destinations to the north, south, east, and west use the station, making it one of the most crucial hubs for the entire American passenger rail system in the 21^st century. Chicago Union Station is the fourth busiest train station in the United States, and remains an important link in plans to develop high-speed rail corridors in the interior of the United States during the 21^st century. In 2017, Amtrak trains carried 30.7 million passengers, a record for the system auguring well for its future.

25. Chicago today

The combination of lake and river shipping, intercity railroads, the growth of local industry, and geography of its location combined to make Chicago the busiest freight exchange point in the United States by the end of the 20^th century. Its vast rail network supports intercity passengers, commuters, tourists, and freight moving in all directions. Freight operations continue around the clock, day after day, stopping only when natural events such as blizzards impede operation. Only New York City moves more commuters by rail each business day. Both the city’s industrial base and its rail operations evolved over time and continue to do so. For example, Chicago no longer rates recognition as the meatpacker to the world.

Nonetheless, the city’s facilities allowed it to retain its position as the busiest handler of rail freight in the United States. Its international airport is the sixth busiest in the world in terms of passengers, though in number of flights handled it remained the busiest in the United States at the beginning of the 21^st century. The massive railyards in the region are a major link in intermodal (containerized) shipping, and its more recent focus on high-tech industries and solutions continues to rely on its transportation systems to move people and goods. There is little doubt that transportation built Chicago, and will be continued to do so long into the future.

Where do we find this stuff? Here are our sources:

“Chicago: A Biography”. Dominic A. Pacyga. 2009

“The Galena and Chicago Union”. David Young, Chicago Tribune. December 18, 2007

“Railroads”. John C. Hudson, The Chicago Encyclopedia. Online

“Remember, Cincinnati” ‘Porkopolis’ was not a compliment”. Greg Hand, Cincinnati Magazine. November 14, 2016

“How Chicago’s Slaughterhouse Spectacles Paved the Way For ‘Big Meat'”. Anne Bramley, National Public Radio. December 3, 2015. Online

“What (or Who) Cause the Great Chicago Fire”. Karen Abbott, Smithsonian Magazine. October, 2012

“Then and Now: A Brief History of the Chicago ‘L'”. Michael Ossman, Loop Chicago. Online

“LaSalle Street Station in Chicago”. Dan Minkus, Vintage Depots. Online

“Chicago and the Illinois Central Railroad”. Clifford J. Downey. 2007

“The North Western: A History of the Chicago & North Western Railway System”. Roger H. Grant. 1996

“Classic American Railroad Terminals”. Kevin J. Holland. 2001

“People and the Port”. Theodore J. Karamanski, Encyclopedia of Chicago. Online

“Lumber”. Theodore J. Karamanski, Encyclopedia of Chicago. Online

“Waterfront”. Dennis H. Cremin, Encyclopedia of Chicago. Online

“Then and now: Sanitary Ship Canal – Chicago”. The Herald News Online.

“Midway Airport”. Derek Vaillant, Encyclopedia of Chicago. Online

“O’Hare”. Amanda Seligman, Encyclopedia of Chicago. Online

“Expressways”. Dennis McClendon, Encyclopedia of Chicago. Online

“The Rise and Fall of the Sleeping Car King”. Jack Kelly, Smithsonian.com. January 11, 2019

“The last years of Chicago streetcars”. John R. Schmidt, WBEZ Chicago. October 5, 2012

“The rise and fall of Amtrak, which has been losing money since 1971”. Graham Rapier, Business Insider. May 20, 2019