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Reflections
Kendall County's location the historic secret to its growth : Reflections : Oswego Ledger-Sentinel : Hometown Newspaper for Oswego and Montgomery, IllinoisKendall County's location the historic secret to its growth
| 7/26/2012
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Kendall County's most recent spate of rapid growth has slowed considerably, thanks to a remarkable combination of criminality and venality on the part of the nation's financial services industry. But at least none of the bankers, rating agency employees, or hedge fund managers have been charged with any crimes-so they've got that going for them.
But before the crash came, our little corner of the world had been a major subject of news articles in this newspaper and even the national news media. From the number of new homes to the number of new school children, it seemed as if our once small and rural county was going to burst at the seams. But then the bubble burst, stealing trillions of dollars in value from millions of Americans almost overnight. Nowadays, the economy in the Fox Valley seems to be starting to recover, and it's even possible to see a few new houses going up here and there.
Kendall County is still a desirable location because of two things, one clearly quantifiable and one not. The county's location, close to the I-88 corridor and heavy concentrations of business to the east is easy to see on any map. Kendall is the only downstate non-collar county bordered by three of those collar counties.
Quality of life is the other thing folks cite when they move here, and that's less easy to describe. Ask most why they moved here, and you'll likely hear something about moving to the country and the area's small-town atmosphere or small-town values. Of course, every time someone moves here, the small town atmosphere they so badly want to experience becomes diluted a little more.
While quality of life is important, it has been Kendall County's location that has contributed most to its growth for the past 180 years. Before that time, the county was home to successive groups of Native Americans. As soon as Euro-Americans arrived on the scene, however, the days of Illinois' first inhabitants was numbered.
The county's earliest Euro-American settlers looked at the county's location along the Fox River, its nearness to the larger DesPlaines-Illinois system, and its proximity to Lake Michigan, along with the area's rich soil, and quickly decided to put down their own roots here.
The earliest settlers looked south for what metropolitan support they needed for their lives. Chicago in the 1820s and early 1830s was a small, muddy collection of cabins, little more than a trading post. In 1831 when George Hollenback, son of early settler Clark Hollenback, decided to give up blacksmithing and open a trading post, he traveled not to Chicago but south to St. Louis to purchase his trade goods.
St. Louis, situated at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers and near the mouth of the Ohio, then had the most advantageous location of any western city. Grain and other produce from throughout frontier Illinois traveled down the state's excellent river system to the Mississippi and Ohio systems and thence to St. Louis, and then to the premier seaport city of the west, New Orleans.
But the trip farm products had to take to get to the ocean was long and expensive. So it wasn't long before businessmen saw the advantages to be gained should Chicago become a major western port-perhaps, if the conditions were to be just right, as the major western port.
Those who had those particular visions had to withstand a lot of criticism and downright disbelief, but they stuck to their guns. Just look at a map, they said. Lake Michigan plunges like a knife blade south into the heart of the continent, connecting the Midwest with New York. The Chicago River, while not much of a river, provides a port on the lake. And Chicago's location close to a continental divide, where water flows both north into Lake Michigan and south into the Illinois-Mississippi system, offered another geographical advantage.
For two decades, though, St. Louis was the main western mercantile hub. From up-river, steamboats, keelboats, and rafts brought grain and meat to the city, which was shipped south to the port of New Orleans.
Meanwhile, Chicago shipping interests embraced the new grain elevators invented in Buffalo, N.Y., that allowed grain to be loaded and unloaded via machinery instead of by bags handled by hundreds of stevedores. Chicago shipping owner Capt. Robert C. Bristol built Chicago's first steam- powered grain elevator on the banks of the Chicago River in 1848, and by 1854, Chicago had far surpassed New Orleans in grain shipments. St. Louis grain merchants were unable to build a similar elevator infrastructure because of the extreme water level fluctuations for which the Mississippi River is famous--an elevator next to the river in the fall would be under water come spring. So Chicago's sluggish, swampy location worked very much in its favor as a mercantile center.
Kendall County, too, shared in Chicago's economic growth. Poor roads hampered the shipment of grain to Chicago, especially until the l&M Canal was finished. But grain could be made to walk to market itself if it were turned into either pork of beef. Stock drives to Chicago were a staple of pre-railroad Kendall County farm life. After the Chicago Burlington and Quincy Railroad ran its first line through the county in 1853 and its second in 1870, more grain than stock was shipped to the lake port.
With the construction in 1870 of the Ottawa, Oswego, and Fox River Valley Railroad connecting towns from Geneva south to Streator with the CB&Q's system, cattle and hogs were driven into Yorkville, Oswego, and other towns along the line for transshipment to the burgeoning stockyards and slaughter houses at Chicago.
Like the pioneers who settled Kendall County in the 1830s, today's newcomers looked around and decided to settle here because of our location. Although it's been taking a breather for the past few years, with modern roads and talk of extending commuter rail service into Kendall County in the future, growth is likely to be the one constant in our lives for years to come.
Looking for more local history? Visit http://historyonthefox.wordpress.com
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