The trip to Chicago was a long and hard one and so was not made many times.
The people started very early in the morning with a wagon and oxen, or if they
were rich enough, they went with horses, which made the journey much easier and
faster than with the oxen, which are very slow animals. It took more than a week
in normal times, depending on the weather and the starting point, but in
exceptionally fine weather the trip could be made in four days with horses, and
five with oxen.
Many were the sighs emitted by a small boy whose father
refused to let him go "up t' Chicaga."
The roads which led to Chicago
from central Illinois came through Lowell and what is now Route 23, then the
Bloomington road, and joined at Ottawa to form a main road along the Illinois
river to Chicago. The road through Lowell and Vermillionville was also a mail
route and coach line route.
The roads were very poor because of poor
drainage conditions, and water stood in them most of the time. This made them so
muddy that they were almost impassable at times. In rainy weather farmers who
were hauling grain to Chicago were almost sure to get stuck somewhere along the
road, and when that happened they could do nothing but wait for someone else to
come along so that by double-teaming they could pull each other out.
Some enterprising citizens who wished to make money and help the travelers
(mostly the former) built roads of planks and charged a toll of so much a mile
for using them. The government also helped do this, and most of them made a good
profit, although roads made in this fashion cost much money and were hard to
keep in repair.
There were many taverns along the roads where the
travelers stayed over night and got meals. Those at Lowell, Utica and
Vermillionville were well known in La Salle county. The old tavern at Lowell was
afterwards used as a grocery store and is now a private house. Card tables were
eminent pieces of furniture and the bar where food and drinks were to be had was
at one end of the lower floor, with the sleeping quarters on the upper floor.
The tavern was a gathering place for the men of the community, and often
saw duty as a dance hall. Those of the farmers who could afford to pay for a
room slept at the tavern, but the others got something to eat and slept with
their horses.
There were no bridges except where the river or creek
could not be forded easily, and these were not very good. One instance showing
the instability of the bridges was when Jumbo, the great elephant, was forced to
wade the Fox river for fear of breaking down the bridge with his weight.
Upon arriving at Chicago the farmer ran into roads (supposed to be streets)
that were worse than the country roads, because of the low land of the flats
surrounding the lake which was not drained very well. The wagons would sometimes
sink to the axle, and many people did a thriving business pulling out wagons
until the city began draining the streets. Jokers sometimes put up signs such as
these in muddy places: "No Bottom Here," "Shortest Road to China," etc.
The grain elevators were near the lake or river, where the goods could be easily
reached by boats, and by the time the farmer with his load of grain arrived at
one of them he was fully justified in heaving a sigh of relief. But it soon
turned to groans when he received the money for his grain or the supplies he
exchanged it for. When he had everything he needed or could get, he started for
home.
There were few robbers in those days, which is quite the contrary
today. This was probably because there was nothing to rob, because almost
everyone was very poor. Once in a while a tavern or farmer was robbed, but this
did not occur very frequently.
When the farmer arrived back home he was
welcomed royally by his family, for trips like those were very few and far
between. He traveled very seldom, so you can imagine the welcome he would
receive upon arriving home after being gone over a week.
Extracted 08 Nov 2018 by Norma Hass from Stories of Pioneer Days in La Salle County, Illinois, by Grammar Grade Pupils, published in 1932, page 97.
| Lee | DeKalb | Kane |
| Bureau |
 |
Kendall |
| Putnam | Grundy | |
| Marshall | Woodford | Livingston |
