The Rock Island Line. Bill Marvel

       Davenport beckons from across the Mississippi in this 1858 Rufus Wright lithograph depicting the arrival four years earlier of the first Rock Island train in its namesake city. Steamboats Ben Campbell and Tishomingo stand offshore. By 1856, a bridge will span these waters. Putnam Museum of History and Natural Science, Davenport, Iowa

      Davenport had been railroad-minded ever since 1839, when he and a 300-pound half-Potawatomi Indian named Antoine LeClair laid out the town that would bear Davenport’s name. Canals were fine, and Davenport had promoted his share. However, they froze in winter and were subject to drought and flood in summer. A railroad, on the other hand, could reach out from canals and rivers, link them, and even cross them. A network of railroads was already racing across the land from Baltimore. Soon it would reach Chicago. If riverfront towns like Rock Island and Davenport were to thrive, they too would have to reach out, not just downriver to St. Louis, but east to Chicago and eventually to the West, where the nation was headed. Iowa’s population was already 96,088; in a year and a half, it would be a state.

      The little group from across the river must have had something like this in mind as members stepped ashore and made their way to Colonel Davenport’s mansion. Separated from mainland Illinois by a narrow stretch of river called “The Slough,” Rock Island had been the site of an army fort until 1836, and much of it was still federal property. But with a population of 4,000, the town was growing.

      Packed into Davenport’s parlor that evening were LeClair—a crowd by himself—who operated a ferryboat on the river; attorney James Grant; lawyer and banker Ebenezer Cook; and miller and real estate promoter A. C. Fulton. All were from the Iowa side. W. A. Whittaker and Lemuel Andrews were Rock Island businessmen. Charles Atkinson, who had platted the town of Moline, and N. D. Elwood, who had ridden the stagecoach all the way from Joliet, rowed across The Slough from the Illinois mainland to attend. With them was Richard P. Morgan, a civil engineer with some experience in railroads. The men talked late into the night and, when they emerged, they had agreed to send Lemuel Andrews to the state legislature at Springfield to obtain a charter for a railroad company. The line was to reach 75 miles from Rock Island to the banks of the Illinois River at La Salle. From there, boats of the Illinois and Michigan Canal would connect with Chicago.

      Eight years before, the Illinois legislature appropriated the then-enormous sum of $10 million for a package of internal improvements that included canals, bridges, and a railroad network. However, a financial panic that year killed that ambitious scheme. Now, a more cautious legislature waited almost two years before issuing a charter to the Rock Island & La Salle Rail Road Company. Capital stock was set at $300,000, and a board of commissioners was chosen to oversee sales.

      Almost four years passed before the needed capital was raised from local farmers and businessmen along the proposed route. With the money finally at hand, in November 1850, the commissioners met in Rock Island and elected directors of the new railroad. Two weeks later the directors elected James Grant president. Colonel Davenport did not live to see his dream realized; within weeks of the June 1845 meeting, he was murdered in his home by robbers.

      Grant’s first task was to find someone to build the road. With several directors in tow, he traveled to Chicago where he sought out Henry Farnam, who was just building the Michigan Southern Railroad westward toward Chicago. One of the most brilliant civil engineers the young Republic had produced, Farnam had experience laying out and building canals and railroads in the East, and he understood that the future lay with rails. The new venture appealed to him. Almost immediately he set out on horseback to scout the proposed route. When he returned, he told directors he would build their railroad, provided the line extended from the Mississippi River not just to the banks of the canal at La Salle, but all the way into Chicago, where it would meet the rails of the Michigan Southern. The result, he pointed out, would be a continuous line of railroad from the Mississippi to the Atlantic Ocean.

       A landmark for decades for Rock Island commuters, the Chicago Board of Trade punctuates the scene at La Salle Street, where RS-3 No. 488 idles in July 1965, before the afternoon suburban rush. Boiler-equipped Nos. 485–499 were geared to run 80 miles per hour and outlasted most of their freighthauling kin. Donald Haskel

      The directors agreed and dispatched Grant to ask the legislature in Springfield to amend the original charter to reflect the new destination. Legislators were reluctant. The Illinois and Michigan Canal Company had been built by the state; a railroad to Chicago would siphon off business. Finally, a compromise was reached: The railroad would pay a toll to canal operators on the traffic it carried between La Salle and Chicago. Farnam urged a reluctant Grant to accept the compromise. (As it turned out, the canal operators failed to approve the agreement by the deadline, and no tolls were ever paid.) On April 4, 1851, the directors approved the new charter, reincorporating the Rock Island & La Salle as the Chicago & Rock Island Rail Road. They asked the Iowa legislature to grant a charter for construction of a depot at Davenport—not coincidentally on land owned by Antoine LeClair. Clearly, their eyes were not only on Illinois.

       Wearing the shortlived white wings paint scheme, U28B No. 249 is just three months old in June 1966, on its way west from De Pue through the lush Illinois River bottoms. Terry Norton

      With Henry Farnam had come a bonus: his astute and resourceful business partner, Joseph Sheffield. If the Rock Island was to build all the way to Chicago, 181 miles, it would need money, and plenty of it, and Sheffield had connections to eastern bankers. In August 1851, members of the railroad’s executive committee met with Farnam and Sheffield in New York to negotiate a contract. The finished document reveals Sheffield’s sharp pencil. The railroad company would buy the right-of-way and fence it. Farnam and Sheffield would build and equip the entire line for $3,987,688. This lump sum would cover grading and track-laying, all rails and ties, bridges, stations, freight houses, engine houses, and 500 feet of docks on the Chicago riverfront. The work was to be completed by January 1, 1856.

      The contract was signed in September. A shipment of iron rails arrived from England in December, and in April 1852, construction began in earnest, with Farnam personally overseeing the work.

      The contract with Farnam and Sheffield meant that control of the railroad would rest not in the hands of the Illinois businessmen who had first promoted it, but in the portfolios of eastern bankers, the money men. In February, Michigan Southern track gangs spiked down the final 6 miles into Chicago. Those miles, by agreement, were to be jointly owned with Rock Island. By then, James Grant had resigned the presidency to devote his time to the Iowa legislature, where he was speaker of the house. In his place, directors elected John B. Jervis, a gifted civil engineer and Farnam associate who, like Farnam, had forged

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