Proposed rail link to Chicago through Racine and Kenosha has historic roots and future challenges
By JOHN GURDA
Posted: Feb. 3, 2007
Chicago
is getting closer. We're already linked to our southern neighbor by
air, freeway and Amtrak service, and now Milwaukee is considering yet
another connection: a new rail line feeding into Chicago's Metra
system.
The proposed commuter line would run along existing freight tracks
from downtown Kenosha through the heart of Racine and into Milwaukee's
business district, with several stops along the way. Proponents of the
KRM Commuter Link, as it's formally known, argue that the project would
create jobs, reduce pollution and encourage economic development all
along the corridor - a winning proposition for everyone.
Our ancestors once harbored similar hopes. In the 1850s, when trains
began to replace lake ships as our region's dominant transportation
mode, Milwaukee looked to railroads as the key to its future. The city
gladly lent money to any enterprise with a locomotive and a business
plan - so much money, in fact, that by 1858, railroad bonds exceeded
one-fourth of Milwaukee's assessed valuation.
Although the practice would eventually push his city to the edge of
bankruptcy, Mayor James Cross saw nothing wrong with it. "The
advantages resulting to the city from its liberal policy cannot well be
foretold," Cross told the aldermen in 1855. "Already we begin to feel
the magical, life-giving influence which it is exerting upon our trade
and commerce."
The first leg of Milwaukee's pioneer railroad was completed to
Waukesha in 1851, but Chicago was considerably farther along. The first
trains from the east reached the foot of the lake in 1852, and the
Windy City became a national rail hub almost overnight.
Local promoters were soon pushing for a Chicago-Milwaukee
connection. It took shape as the Green Bay, Milwaukee and Chicago
Railroad, a city-supported venture better known as the Lake Shore line.
In 1855, the Lake Shore was completed to Kenosha, where it connected
with another railroad to Chicago. The KRM Commuter Link would start at
the same place and follow the same route north.
A delegation of Milwaukeeans rode down to Kenosha for the "last
spike" ceremony on May 19, 1855, joining a group of 400 Chicagoans.
Though a lawyer by trade, Cross himself wielded the sledgehammer,
driving the spike, reported the Milwaukee Sentinel approvingly, "as if
he were used to it."
Cross invoked the spirit of regional cooperation in his remarks. "We
have come hither this morning to meet you in a common cause," the mayor
told his neighbors, "for the purpose of formally uniting the cities of
Chicago and Milwaukee and the sister cities along the line, by bands of
iron - and at the same time unite the hearts of their citizens - by the
indissoluble bonds of social and commercial intercourse and friendship."
The Milwaukee Sentinel was just as hopeful: "This road will place us
within three hours' distance of Chicago and its connections East and
South, and thus, until the direct route Eastward is in operation, take
the full tide of trade and travel, to and from the East. It must pay,
from the start."
Beneath the enthusiasm was an undercurrent of deep concern. During
the heyday of lake shipping, Milwaukee lay 90 miles closer to the
eastern seaboard than Chicago. With the advent of rail service, the
city was 90 miles farther away. Our ancestors were vulnerable, and they
knew it.
The wisdom of a rail link to Chicago was self-evident, but Milwaukee
desperately wanted an eastern connection of its own - the "direct route
Eastward" mentioned in the Sentinel story. Even as Cross was driving
the last spike, a group of local promoters was trying to develop
cross-lake ferry service between Milwaukee and the railhead at Grand
Haven, Mich.
That idea was a few decades ahead of its time, but Milwaukee was
determined to preserve its independence. The city's homegrown railroad,
famous in later years as the Milwaukee Road, became a stubborn rival of
the Chicago & North Western, the Lake Shore line's successor.
The Milwaukee company laid its own tracks to Chicago and declined to
share terminal facilities with its adversary. That's why two grand
railroad depots were built in downtown Milwaukee: one on the lakefront
for the North Western and a second on 3rd and Clybourn streets for the
Milwaukee Road. Both, unfortunately, met their demise decades ago.
An independent railroad network made all the difference in the world
- or at least in southeastern Wisconsin. It was Milwaukee's excellent
rail connections and superb harbor that kept the city from withering in
the deep shade of Chicago. By 1862, Milwaukee was the largest shipper
of wheat on the planet, and it was developing the critical mass that
enabled it to keep growing even as its neighbor to the south became
America's Second City.
The tracks between the two cities have remained busy ever since.
More than 150 years after the first trains clattered down the line in
1855, it's fascinating, and more than a little ironic, to watch the
same hopes and some of the same fears come to life on the same route
connecting the same lakeshore cities.
I support the KRM Commuter Link. Chicago, after all, is a great
place to live 90 miles away from, and getting there by train is
infinitely more pleasant than traveling by car.
But we need to proceed with our eyes wide open. I take it for
granted that a megalopolis will one day sprawl from southwestern
Michigan all the way to Milwaukee and then on to Madison and Sheboygan,
with Chicago at its epicenter. It won't happen in my lifetime, but it
may in my children's.
When you fly over southeastern Wisconsin at night, there are still
bands of relative darkness separating Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha and
that vast ocean of light that is Chicago. Year by year, those bands are
growing brighter, and the KRM Commuter Link would hasten the day when
they finally coalesce.
The threat to Milwaukee is not economic subjugation, as it was in
the 1850s, but cultural annexation. Chicago has been spreading like an
amoeba for decades, and its reach now extends across the state line.
I have friends who compete in the Chicagoland Women's Triathlon each year. The event is held in Pleasant Prairie - Wisconsin.
Milwaukee is hardly a quaint little village on the verge of being
overrun by uncaring outlanders. Chicago's mushrooming influence isn't
much different, in truth, from the impact Milwaukee's outward expansion
has had on Waukesha or West Bend.
But Milwaukee has always been a place apart, relating to Chicago in
much the same way that Canada relates to the United States. Losing some
of that distinctiveness may be inevitable, and it may not be all bad.
But as we look down the tracks to Chicago, let's be careful what we wish for.
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