Then & Now: Rock Island Railroad Depot – Minooka

The manner in which Americans moved around their world changed drastically during the last half of the 19th century. Before the 1850s, the only practical way to travel and trade across long distances was along the nation’s many natural waterways. As a result, patterns of settlement were focused along the nation’s coastal areas and the rivers. A few dirt roads connected major towns or cities, but travel on them was difficult, unpredictable and time consuming.

Large ships moved passengers and freight across oceans; smaller boats navigated the nation’s rivers, lakes and canals. Even bicycles, carriages and wagons rolled passengers over thousands of miles of local roads. In time, many new villages, towns and cities sprouted up along these new routes.

By 1900, locomotives traveled along thousands of miles of rails that crisscrossed America. Almost every town, large and small, could claim a railroad depot, which was due largely to the fact that railroads once went almost everywhere, reaching almost any and every town. In the beginning, the promise of a rail line passing through town often meant boom or bust for any settlement.

Railroad station buildings, or depots, often were the center of activity and communications for small towns in America. In the years before the automobile, the railroad depot was the only means to the outside world for most people. Not only could you use the building to board your train to faraway places, but it also was where the goods you purchased were delivered.

In some remote towns, the station agent lived in or near the depot. In fact, in a small town such as Minooka, the station agent handled all the duties required of the railroads. They were ticket agent, baggage handler, mail sorter and more. But their most important duty was receiving telegraphic orders for trains and passing them on to train crews.

The typical small-town wooden depot was rectangular in shape and paralleled the railroad tracks. At one end was the freight room, which had a pair of scales for weighing items that needed to be shipped. At the other end of the building was a waiting room with benches for passengers, and usually equipped with a pot-bellied or coal-burning stove for heat. The station agent usually had an office adjoining the waiting room.

In Minooka, the opening of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad in 1852 led to the establishment of the village. Ransom Gardner, a surveyor for the railroad, bought 500 acres in the northeast corner of Grundy County and plotted the town of Minooka. Originally called Summit, because the town sat at the highest geographical point on the Rock Island Line, Minooka was an ideal stop between Morris and Joliet. Two sets of tracks ran eastbound, and two sets of track ran westbound. North of town the E.J.&E. (Elgin, Joliet & Eastern) Railway Company came into existence in December 1888, when the Indiana company merged with its Illinois counterpart. In the early 1890s, the E.J.&E. then acquired the Gardner, Coal City & Northern Railway Company, which consisted of a line from Coster (just south of Coal City) northbound through Minooka to a connection with the E.J.&E.’s main line at Walker Junction. This railroad carried coal and freight from the coal mines south of the Illinois River to the steel mills in the Joliet and Chicago area.

Business development occurred rapidly around both depots, including a boarding house, blacksmith shops, hardware store, bank, pharmacy, churches, restaurants and grain elevators among others.