In
1850, a group of devout Methodists, among
them John Evans, Orrington
Lunt, and Andrew Brown, founded an institution of "sanctified learning"
which became Northwestern University. The site they chose along the
shores of Lake Michigan was at that time part of a rural farming
community known as Ridgeville. They purchased several hundred acres of
farmland, enough for a university campus and a new town. Over the
winter of 1853-54, Philo Judson, business agent for the new University,
laid out the town; the NU trustees named the town Evanston after John
Evans. Knowing the importance of the railroad to the future of the town
and the university, Andrew Brown induced the Chicago & Milwaukee
Railroad to route its tracks near the new town by donating the land for
the railroad right-of-way as well as a depot site [Perkins, 16-22]. Up
until that time public transportation in the area consisted of a
stagecoach that ran along Green Bay Road and took a day and a half to
go from Chicago to Milwaukee, and the ride was not exactly a smooth one:
"The stagecoach drivers were a wild bunch of fellows. They enjoyed
jostling the passengers. The rougher the ride, the more they enjoyed
it. Oh yea! They were a bunch of characters." [Interview with Mr.
Orner, Hinky Dinks, p. 4]
With stagecoach service like this, you can imagine the joy with which
the first Iron Horse to run through Evanston was greeted:
"The first railroad train passed through Evanston on its way to
Waukegan, December 19, 1854. Ah, proud the day and proud the people,
through whose towns the bravely puffing, little wood-burning engine
drew its tender and one lone coach, amid the cheers of its admirers."
[Reeling, pp. 378-9]
This railroad was the Chicago & Milwaukee, which in 1866 became
part of the Chicago & North Western. That first locomotive probably
looked much like the Pioneer,
pictured below. The Pioneer
was the first locomotive to run on the
Chicago & North Western's predecessor, the Galena & Chicago
Union Railroad.
In the early days,
there was only one "accommodation train" run per day in each direction
between Evanston and Chicago. There were no streetlights, so commuters
brought oil lamps and left them at the station in the morning so they
could see their way home at night.
"The largest string of lanterns was outside the Davis Street station in
Evanston. And a stranger, who inquired about them, discovered that they
belonged not to the railroad personnel but to commuters, men who had
taken the early morning trains to Chicago.
'Raymond Park,' says the antiquarian who looked into the matter, 'was a
thickly wooded section in the 1870s, and on an early winter morning,
those woods were as dark as the inside of a fireman's glove...'
So you can see the picture. Father, late as usual, looks up at the
cuckoo clock as he scalds his throat with a last quick cup of coffee.
In the still, empty air he can hear the engine whistle blowing for
Elser's Crossing up there on the other side of Grosse Point. He wipes
his moustache, gives Mamma a peck on the cheek, picks up his lantern,
and starts his trek through the black forest to the North Western
station.
Survivors of those fascinating days say that the lanterns of commuters
loping over the snow trails for the 7:23 were generally so thick that
the woods seemed to be swarming with fireflies. During the day
the station attendant would service the lanterns, trimming the wicks,
and filling them with oil so that the owners would be able to find
their way home in the evening." [Casey,
pp. 277-8]
The directors of the
railroad intended it primarily as a
freight-hauling business; only the railroad's president, Walter S.
Gurnee, envisioned a string of bedroom communities with residents
commuting by train to work in downtown Chicago each day. With that in
mind, Gurnee purchased land along the North Shore that would eventually
become the towns of Lake Bluff, Highland Park, Glencoe, and Winnetka.
Naturally, the passenger stations were sited near the land he owned
[Ebner, pp. 22-3]. The directors of the
road did not share this vision,
however, and at the end of 1855 they decided to cancel the
accommodation trains. Charles George tells us what happened next:
"After the Waukegan train had run about a year, the directors of the
road met and passed a resolution to take off the accommodation, as it
did not pay. 'That will never do,' Superintendent Johnson instantly
remarked when he heard of the resolution. 'Charley, you have had a
great deal of experience in carrying commutation passengers in Boston;
come with me and we'll see what we can do in this matter.' We went
before the directors and strongly urged them not only to continue the
train, but to adopt a more liberal policy toward their patrons in the
way of generous concessions in fares and a well regulated time-table.
'This is the way it seems to me, gentlemen,' I argued. 'When a lawyer
comes to town and hangs out his shingle, he does not get clients all at
once. Months pass and they then begin to come in, slowly it is true,
but it would be folly to take down the shingle and leave town just as
business showed signs of beginning, even if it didn't pay just then.'
The directors asked me many questions about suburban traffic in Boston,
and I stated what I knew of its rise and steady development.
'If you adopt that course,' I said to them, 'it will not be long before
you'll have to put on a second train, then a third, and a fourth - in
fact, there is no telling where it will stop.'
After considerable discussion, the directors decided to act on our
suggestions. The wisdom of their decision has been proved by the vast
increase of suburban traffic. On my old run, where a single small
engine and one coach did all the service for the mere handful of
patrons, there are now twenty-six daily trains, carrying two millions
and a quarter of passengers annually." [George,
pp. 89-90]
Evanston is world-famous
as a "Temperance town" and the home of the
Women's Christian Temperance Union. Almost since the beginning it was a
"dry" town, thanks to the charter of Northwestern University, which
prohibited the sale of alcohol within a 4-mile radius of the campus.
However, as Charles George tells us, not everyone who worked on the
railroad respected this prohibition:
"In my early days on the Waukegan road, I had an engineer who was as
devoted to his bottle as to his engine. It was in 1855, and we were
taking out three cars full of children, bound for Evanston where they
were to have a picnic. The engineer was intoxicated, but none of us
knew it at the time. When he reached Evanston, instead of stopping, he
ran straight by the station at a high speed. We stopped the train with
the brakes as soon as we could, the engineer claiming that something
was wrong about the throttle, so that he could not shut off steam.
Fortunately we stopped just in time, for another train was already in
sight. I asked the fellow what in the world he was thinking about to do
such a foolhardy thing as that.
'I was just thinking,' said the half-drunken man, 'that if I should hit
that train, what a lot of little angels these children would make.'" [George, p. 87]
Until 1882 the railroad between Chicago and
Evanston consisted of a
single track. Adding the second track presented a bit of a problem for
the C&NW, which had constructed its stations along the east side of
the track. The second track had to be laid on the opposite side of the
existing track from the stations. For the convenience of morning
commuters, who would obviously prefer to wait for their trains inside a
heated depot, it was decided to run Chicago-bound trains on the left
hand track, since it was nearest to the station houses. This
was, of course, no problem for commuters returning home in the
evenings, who had no need to wait at the station after detraining. This
is the most likely
reason
why the C&NW operated as a "left-hand" railroad. [Knudsen, p. 9]
Incidentally, the "L" also operated
left-handed for a time,
but for a very different
reason: to avoid switching delays on the downtown Loop. [Moffat, p.
198] It switched to right-handed operation in 1913 in concert with
similar changes on the Loop. [Moffat,
p. 242]
At its peak, the C&NW main line
through Evanston consisted
of three tracks, with the center track being a reversible "express"
track used by inbound trains in the morning and outbound trains in the
evening. Originaly, the three tracks merged into two about 1/4 mile
south of the Wilmette station at a location called Wilmette Tower. As
time went on, more and more
of this "extra" track became superfluous and was removed in stages,
with the former center track
becoming the
outbound
track. For example, by 1957 the
location where the three mainline tracks merged down to two was moved
south to Canal
Junction and Wilmette Tower was closed. This
track removal is why Evanston now has several viaducts where weeds have
replaced rails and ties. As time went on, several of the stations were
reconfigured. In some cases, passenger platforms were cut back (such as
the one that used to extend south over Davis Street). In other cases,
new
platforms were constructed directly on top of where the third track
used to be.
The C&NW's commuter trains made
several stops on the main line in Evanston, at Calvary Cemetery
(Mulford Street and
Chicago Avenue), Main Street, Dempster Street, Davis Street, and
Central Street. On December 1, 1958, the
C&NW closed down 22 of its close-in sations to increase
the efficiency of the commuter trains serving the expanding suburban
fringe. [Grant, p. 204] The Evanston
stations at Calvary Cemetery and Dempster Street were
closed at this time. The C&NW
continued to run commuter service to its remaining Evanston stations
until
the merger with the Union Pacific Railroad in 1995. Today the UP runs
these commuter trains under the Metra banner.