Walworth County, Wisconsin - Chapter 16: Roads Axd Road-Making Railways, 1912

Chapter 16: Roads Axd Road-Making Railways

The earliest of all roads were the Indian trails. Of these the most important was that from Milwaukee to Galena, passing through the northern part of the count}' and having lateral branches from Whitewater to hurt Atkinson and elsewhere in the Bark River country. Mr. Cravath describes this as about fifteen inches wide and trodden in the spongier places to such depth as more to resemble a ditch than the "highway of a nation." A trail from Geneva lake passed by way of Lafayette and East Troy to Mukwonago lake, and this became part of the "army trail," used by federal troops in their marches between Fort Dearborn and the forts of the North and Northeast. Another trail from the foot of Geneva lake led to Godfrey's at the upper fork of the Fox, near Rochester, and thence to Racine, with a branch to Milwaukee. But these lateral trails varied more or less in their course, and were sometimes confusing to white travelers, so that fords were found with difficulty or missed wholly. Generally, the Indians found the most practicable routes from point to point, with short cuts and detours suited to conditions of weather and soil; but their roads, so cunningly surveyed, were not made with hands. Other trails led from lake to lake and from village or camp to hunting, fishing, and trapping places. Some of these routes, no doubt, gave partial direction to white men's first roads.

There was no distinct trail from Gardner's prairie to Turtle creek. Allen Perkins, returning in July, 1836, from his new'ly-made claim near Delavan, lost his way and was found twenty-four hours later by Colonel Phoenix - - more -killed in the craft of woods and prairie - and guided to Gardner's. Thereupon the settler- turned out and dragged a tree over the whole route, so breaking down brush and weeds and scratching soft or loose earth as to make the way plain and nearly straight. The present highway from Delavan to Elkhorn, and the more southerly of two mads thence to Spring Prairie, coincide nearly with the route taken b) Colonel Phoenix.

The territorial Legislature established a few routes from the lake shore to the valley of the Rock, - as, from Milwaukee and Racine to Janesville and from Kenosha to Beloit; but these were in no wise king's highways for smooth and rapid transit. The) became, in a way. trunk roads, for the county's system of highways. To define road districts and appoint viewers for roads ordered or authorized were among the earlier duties of the first governing board, the county commissioners. With the soon-following organization of the several towns their supervisors, under direction of the yearly town meetings, ordered the work of the plows and the shovels, stopping scrupulously at town lines. If this was not a good method, it was the only one practicable for more than sixty years.

Twenty years after the coming of Gardner, Meacham, Payne and Phoenix, the ways in spring and fall, and in open winters, were in many if not in most places just as bad as patient men could endure - and patient men were in the majority. For instances, the crossings of Sugar Creek valley and that of Duck Lake marsh were just a little better than the adjacent bogs. Perhaps, taken together, the roads leading out of Elkhorn were the worst within the knowledge of men. The road to Delavan was bad. The two roads into Sugar Creek were worse. The road leading due eastward toward Spring Prairie (Colonel Phoenix's trail) was worst. The town line roads northward and southward were pluperfectly worst. That which passes the fair ground into Lafayette and thence eastward was for two miles plusquamperfectly vile, and hence not to lie described in fair terms.

Much has been told and written of privations undergone and difficulties met and overcome by the pioneers. It may be doubted if they and their children and grandchildren have endured anything much worse than their own roads; for these were a long-lasting and for long a hopeless affliction to men and their unmurmuring beasts. The men of Elkhorn and adjoining towns were not wanting in enlightened public spirit. The}-, as other men, were ruled by the circumstances of their time, which, neither tor Walworth nor for the next county in any direction, were then favorable to boulevard-making.

There is gravel nearly everywhere in the county, but not everywhere of the fittest for road making. Some fortunate towns have it at the pathmaster's convenience, whenever he may work, while for other towns it must be hauled at greatly multiplied cost, or. an inferior compound of clay, sand and pebbles must be used. For tin- past twenty years the more general tendency lias been to use the better material. For at least one-half of the year the greater part ol the POads are lilted well out of the mud, and the fair-ground is no longer fronted h\ a "hole of sorrow."

But tlie good thai sometimes comes to such as can wait seventy-five years seenis now at band. The county board of 1911, at its November session, acting under a statute of that year, elected as its first county board commissioner Herman J. Peters, of the town of Sharon 1 who is a son of the super- visor for that town). The sum of nine thousand five hundred dollars was appropriated for the work of 191 2. This is the sum of fifteen appropriations made previously by as many towns, only Troy not in the list. The state levies a like sum. which when collected is returned to the county on conditions prescribed by statute. The towns retain the initiative, and may each do its road-work by its own officers and citizens. The work done in any year is limited to fifteen per cent, of the county's road mileage. To receive statutory aid the towns must conform to the general plans of the state road commission and admit the supervision of the county's officer. If this is done, the principal roads will become parts of a state system. In order to secure such a result, the adjoining counties interchange plans of each year's work to be done, so that road may meet road at the county lines.

In brief, state and county roads will have nine-foot roadbeds, of best material locally available, well rolled, with enough margin for meeting and passing vehicles, and will be built under competent direction. Cities and incorporated villages must pay state and county road taxes, but road-making stops at their limits. Hence, these municipalities will have such streets as they may care to make or may choose to endure.

The Legislature of New York in 1826 incorporated the Mohawk & Hudson Railway Company with a capital of three hundred thousand dollars. and this might be increased to a half million. Its line was from Albany to Schenectady, fourteen miles, and the road was built in 1830-1. In 1830 the Canajoharie & Catskill and the Delaware & Hudson companies were incorporated. About this time other companies were chartered, as, the Port Byron & Auburn, Hudson & Berkshire, Great Au Sable, Catskill & Ithaca, Salina & Port Watson, Canandaigua & Geneva, Ithaca & Owego railways. The counties in which lay these proposed lines supplied no small share of the firstcomers to Walworth, many of whom may have been jolted over a few miles of straj>-rail, at ten or twelve miles an hour, through forests and swamps primeval, in low-roofed compartment cars, behind locomotives of low horsepower, and at rates not fixed by statute.

The lakes were a natural highway from Buffalo to the line of ports placed at the mouth of rivers and creeks from Green bay to Kenosha, each one a new Tyre; but railways were needed, and at once, by which to reach the inland and river counties, to distribute throughout the Wisconsin paradise a part of the rising tide of immigration. The settlements of Walworth were scant fifteen years old when the -fast- following railway builders had reached

Men of Milwaukee were neither blind nor idle. In 1847 a railway to Waukesha was projected and in four years it was built thus far. Money was needed to carry this line across to the Mississippi. A change in its charter gave it a definite western terminus at Prairie du Chien, and in 1856 the first train ran across the narrower part of the state. The road was new-named Milwaukee & Mississippi. It reached Whitewater in 1852 and in the same year was built to Milton. This was nearly as soon as Chicago was reached from Detroit and Toledo, and but thirteen years after Dr. Tripp had built his mill. This road enters the town at section 1, turns southwesterly at the city, and leaves by section 18.

Racine, too, had golden visions of trade diverted from the big villages of Chicago and Milwaukee to the rising city with "the finest harbor along the lake." In 1852 her railway investors procured a charter for the Racine, Janesville & Mississippi Railway. Her own capital was insufficient, and the counties and towns along the proposed line were urged to issue bonds and their citizens to subscribe to stock. The western terminus was not fixed definitely. Partly, perhaps, because if built wholly in Wisconsin the line would be rather too near the Milwaukee road's way, but probably more to secure a desirable connection with Iowan lines south of Dubuque, the course was diverted from Janesville to Beloit and thence through Freeport to Savannah. As at first surveyed through this county the track would have been nearly straight from I ,yons to Delavan. leaving Elkhorn a mile or more northward. There was no excess of cash capital at Elkhorn, but there were poor men whose minds were filled with dreams of nothing less than a triple-junction of long-line railways, and from such a maze of frogs and switches and side-tracks and Y's it must follow as surcl}- as the working of the law of gravitation that trade must leave Chicago and all other fictitious, accidental and temporary trade centers and huddle itsell about the court house square. One railway was building up Whitewater like an exhalation. What three railways would do for Elkliorn only assessors and census enumerators could tell, after the wonderful doing. It was easy enough for Elderkin, Preston, Smith. Spooner, Utter, Winsor, and all the talkers of a county-seat t" persuade their hopeful fellow citizens that private money and village bunds could net be invested in other i\ with such certainty of quick and yearly increasing profit. Elkhom raised twenty thousand dollars and Delavan twenty-five thousand dollars, and early in [856 tbi' track was extended From Burlington to Delavan, with stations also at Lyonsdale and Springfield. In the fall the work was carried through

Darien and Allen Grove to Clinton, where the Chicago & Northwestern road, passing through Sharon village, crossed on its way to Janesville. The next year the work was pushed about two stations beyond Beloit - Brockton and Shi Hand. The business panic of that year checked railway building, though in 1859 trus road reached Freeport and halted there until a change of ownership, with change of name to Western Union, extended it to Savannah, and later to Rock Island.

In 1869 the great Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul consolidation, which already included the Western Union line, built its straight line from Chicago to Milwaukee, making a new crossing at Western Union Junction, now named Corliss. In 1869-70 seventeen miles of track, from Ea'gle to Elkhorn, through the towns of Troy and Lafayette, with three intermediate stations, connected the Milwaukee & Prairie du Chien division with the Racine & Southwestern division. There were men along this line who imagined that passengers between Milwaukee and Rock Island would be brought by way of this new track. But the company's policy was not so much to rearrange travelroutes or to build up new cities of Walworth as to make it unlikely that some other company would fulfil the old dream of a road from Milwaukee through East Troy to Beloit. As a small part of a great railway system this branch is not profitless, and it is of much convenience to local travelers and shippers. Neither citizens nor towns were asked to aid this bit of railway-building.

In 1853 men of Whitewater, Elkhorn and Geneva obtained a charter as the Wisconsin Central Railway Company. Beginning at Genoa and running diagonally through the county much curved from Geneva toward Elkhorn, and onward in a nearly straight line to Whitewater, and thence through Jefferson, Columbus and Portage, the builders would be providentially guided to a suitable terminus at Lake Superior. Erom Genoa to Chicago its trains would use the Galena & Chicago Union tracks. Millard and Heart Prairie lay on this crow-flight across the county. By 1857 the line was nearly determined through Stevens Point to the mouth of Montreal river. The first president of the company was Legrand Rockwell, and the last one was Rufus Cheney, Jr. From first to last Edwin Hodges was secretary and treasurer, Frederick J. Starin its chief engineer, and Winsor & Smith its attorneys. It is not now easy to find director lists or names of stockholders, bul Charles M. Baker, of Geneva, George Bulkley and Otis Preston, of Elkhorn, Eleazar Wakeley, of Whitewater, and perhaps John A. Pierce, of Millard, were among the leaders. But for the day of reckoning, for business men of America, late in 1857, this road might have been built. Much grading was done almost continuous!] from Genoa to Whitewater, and at points beyond. The towns along the line had been authorized by statute to give their bonds in aid. and most of them had done so, in amounts up to the statutory limit, which varied between fifteen thousand and forty thousand dollars. They who could not or would not subscribe to stock could easily enough vote for issuance of village or town bonds. As Mr. Simmons tells for Lake Geneva: "This was considered a glorious opportunity to get something for nothing, as we should secure the road, while the bonds would pay for the stock - and the stock in turn would pay the bonds, - and the dividends would pay the interest." Mr. Cravarh says that Messrs. Cheney and Wakeley "were very successful in obtaining subscriptions, most of the inhabitants (at Whitewater) taking from one to five shares." At Klkhorn whoso owned his home lot and one quarteracre lot besides was already well on the road to wealth not earned with hands. In all this there was nothing peculiar to the men of Walworth. The Legislature of Wisconsin, like the legislatures of other states, had been chartering possible and improbable railways since 1850. The air was everywhere filled with talk of prosperity-bringing railways and of first-class cities springing ii] > in a day and a night. An instance of great things unforetold : where was a cornfield in 1855 was Clinton, Iowa, in 1856, with more than a thousand inhabitants, and other thousands looked for by every train and river steamer.

Kenosha is but ten miles from Racine and, in seventeen years of strife as to which should be greatest, had fallen somewhat behind. In that period 01 railway chartering, namely, in 1853, it did not seem impossible, at Kenosha. to reverse their places in order of population and business, nor even to rival Milwaukee. A charter was easily procured for a railway through Geneva and Sharon to Beloit, and also an enabling act by which each town so traversed might vote for an issue of bonds. Before the towns bad voted, a change of route directed the line to Rockford by way of Genoa, with a design to reach Rock Island and divide the trade of Iowa with Chicago. It was a Napoleonic gave Kenosha a line to Rockford and thence not as Kenosha willed but as the company found mos( to it^ own advantage. The little citv now prospers at a healthy rate, from its natural advantages.

Milwankccans. too. saw in mind's eye a highway across Walworth fields to Beloit, thus to conned their city with the trade of middle and farther Iowa. This line was to come into the county from Mukwonagn and pass through I .m Troy. Troy, Lafayette and Elkihorn, to Delavan and thence its trains would use tlir Racine load's tracks to Beloit. Horatio llill, president, and mosd of the directorate were oi Milwaukee. Among the local incorporators were Manson II. Barnes, vice-president, Alender (A Babcock, secretary and

Walworth Cocntv, Wisconsin. 1 89

In 1857 the grading was well under way and there was every fair sign that trains would run over the whole route within another year but for that all-arresting monetary panic from which business had not yet recovered when civil war began.

The collapse of all these plans of railway-building bore heavily on the whole community, but upon none more than upon men who had too liberallv mortgaged farms and homes to pay -subscriptions at the sales of stocks. The towns could stagger along for a few years under their several loads of bonded indebtedness. Both towns and farmers presently found that they had not to settle with the bankrupted railway companies, but with men to whom panic periods were their own peculiar harvest times; for there are few calamities in human affairs so widespread and complete that a fortunate few, if so minded, may not turn to their profit while the many "weep and bleed and groan." So much like swindling it seemed, to men of the less complex civilization of country life, to be held for the face value, or even a large-profit compromise value, of bonds which had cost the latest holders nearly nothing, that something of the spirit of Bunker Hill was aroused. In April, i860, a successor to the late Chief Justice Whiton was to be chosen, and an issue was made, in several counties, on the validity of these farm mortgages. The decisions of lower courts were often unpopular (though Judge Noggle, of the first circuit, decided in 1859 against the bond holders), and the partly selfvictimized farmers and their friends looked to the supreme court for relief. A. Scott Sloan, of Beaver Dam, in a temporarily famous letter to his brother, Ithamar C. Sloan, of Janesville, seemed to take an equitable view of the question. The letter was published in his interest, and it gained for him a large majority of the vote of Walworth and of a few counties in similar plight. Fortunately for the permanent credit of the state, Judge Dixon - already on the bench by appointment - was elected, and the sober second thought of Walworth helped to keep him in place until his resignation in 1K74. The year 1861 brought the new burdens of war to divide men's attention.

The whole story of the Wisconsin Central Railway is not yet told. Late in 1856 nine miles of strap-rail, outworn in service of the Galena & Chicago Union Railway, was laid from < ienoa to a point near Geneva village and trains ran to and from Elgin. Thus the much desired connection was made with Chicago. The next year the citizens of Geneva made an effort, and broughl tracks and trains into the village. The depression of business, ever) where continuing until hope could scarcel; cri ite from its own wreck new hope and this with the wear and tear of the make-shift rail-laying, operated to take away the locomotive and to put on a horse or mule team, and even this reduction of power was again reduced, accidentally, by one-half.

The Chicago & Northwestern railway, in 1856, laid about four miles of its track across a corner of the town of Sharon, making a station at the village, and pushed onward to Janesville. The next year it was built to Fond du Lac and probably farther. As far as now known the company asked nothing and received nothing from Sharon but its right of way across that fortunate town. Fifteen years later it came into Bloomfield and Geneva by arrangement with a local company. In 1871 a few citizens of Geneva and its vicinjty, among whom were Charles M. J laker, Robert H. Baker, John W. Boyd, W. Densmore Chapin. Lewis Curtis. John Haskins, Thomas W. Hill, Erasmus 1). Richardson, and Timothv Clark Smith, procured a charter for the State Line and Union Railway Company, to be built from Genoa to Columbus and thence to some point, not named, in the Kingdom of Ponemah. President Baker made a contract with the Chicago & Northwestern company to build and operate the road from Genoa Junction to Lake Geneva. In 1887 this load was extended to Williams Bay, six miles from the city, and ninetytwo miles from Chicago, and is now a part of a great system of connected railways owning or operating ten thousand miles of tracks.

From time to time, after the Civil war, a faint hope was revived in the minds of men by rumors of new corporate combinations which would or might find it expedient to lay tracks from Lake Geneva to Whitewater and obliquely onward toward the arctic circle. Between 1871 and 1881 the Chicago, Portage & Lake Superior Railway Company acquired some more or less disputed title to the right of way. cuts and dumps of the dead Wisconsin Central company, and the brighter day for all here concerned seemed about to break in sun-lighted splendor. But a transfer of a million dollars in paid stock of the new company to the Chicago, Minneapolis & Omaha company, whose interest, it seemed, was not to 1 mild this piece of road, soon dissipated that ihi >rf lived dream.

At the legislative msmhh of iXNj a bill to bestow a grant of public land upon the last named company was considered and passed. Donald Stewart. an assemblyman for Walworth, moved an amendment requiring the company to pa) certain old claims held by citizens of the county againsl the old company, The amendment failed of passage, hut Mr. Stewart signalized himself li\ a speech that commanded hearing, though it had no further effect at M'adison. I lis opponents spoke in such high terms oi this speech that his constituents were nearly persuaded that in the combative farmer of Sugar

Creek the county had found its ablest and stoutest representative, past, present, or likely soon to come, of its interests. He served another term, and then his district forgot him and his great speech.

William R. Chadsey, one of the old Central company's building contractors, had some real or shadow}- rights in its forlorn road-bed, and these were more or less complicated by suits and cross-suits in the federal court at Milwaukee. Having himself outlasted whatever commercial credit he might once have had, he urged the attention of a few capitalists at New York to a railway map of Wisconsin. Thus they might see readily that time had but confirmed the wisdom of the first projectors in their choice of a way from Chicago to anywhere in the farther Northwest. Long lines had since been built on each side, leaving a rail-less belt of rich and highly improved farms, each with its enormous barn, wind-mill, and other evidences of wisely-directed and well-rewarded industry, and dotted with villages waiting but the railwaybuilder's touch to make them each a forever-flourishing city. Gen. William S. Rosecrans was called to their councils and was commissioned to come with Mr. Chadsey and see for them what had been done, what must be done, and to judge of the likelihood that enough local business could be assured to warrant the outlay. The two men went over the line from Lake Geneva to Portage, in July, 1883, and on reaching Whitewater found there a federal marshal's deputy awaiting them with papers, enjoining them to perform no act denoting possession of any part of the old line. Whatever ( feneral Rosecrans reported, it has not since appeared that the men at New York cared to invest in an endlessly complicated suit in the federal court.

In [886 a new Wisconsin Central railway was built from Chicago, crossing the older lines from Kenosha and Racine at Fox River and Burlington, respectively, and entering Walworth county at Honey (reek, making a station at Lake Beulah, and passing through Waukesha county into the indefinite northwest. It is now known as the Chicago division of the Minneapolis, Saint Paul & Sault Sainte Marie railway system, controlling about four thousand miles of track.

In [901 the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul company built its Chicago Tanesville and Madison division, crossing the towns of Linn and Walworth and a corner each of Sharon and Darien. Its stations within the county are Zenda (in Linn), Walworth village, and Bardwell, ai first named Tioga, in Darien.

Two short but very useful electric lines at presenl complete the railway list of the county: from Harvard to Walworth village and Fontana in [899 and from Milwaukee by way of Mukwonago to Ea ' I roy village in rc;o8, Men were securing rights of way in 191 1 for an electric line from Lake Geneva to Whitewater along the grades of the old Wisconsin Central company. Though this action does not assure an early construction.it has raised, in the minds of men. some renewal of old hope.