Isa's Blog - America 1854 - The Far West
Lynn B. Connor - Adventures in History
LINK: ebook THE ENGLISH WOMAN IN AMERICA at Gutenberg.org (free)
The Far West - on the banks of the Mississippi where the train tracks end
I left for Detroit, but changed plans when I learned I could go all the way to the Mississippi River by train.
I was surprised when the train stopped in a clearing in the forest. There was only a small shanty for the man who cuts wood for the engine, two sidings for the trains coming in different directions, and no platform for the 200-300 people who waited for trains.
After three nights on the train, we reached Rock Island and the Mississippi. We took a little steamer a couple of miles down the river where I breakfasted "in a long wooden shed with blackened rafters and an earthen floor" and ate "johnny-cake, squirrels, buffalo-hump, dampers, and buckwheat, tea and corn spirit, with a crowd of emigrants, hunters, and adventurers..."
Such an adventure! No time to write more. Back on the steamer returning to Rock Island and then a train to Chicago.
I left for Detroit, but changed plans when I learned I could go all the way to the Mississippi River by train.
I was surprised when the train stopped in a clearing in the forest. There was only a small shanty for the man who cuts wood for the engine, two sidings for the trains coming in different directions, and no platform for the 200-300 people who waited for trains.
After three nights on the train, we reached Rock Island and the Mississippi. We took a little steamer a couple of miles down the river where I breakfasted "in a long wooden shed with blackened rafters and an earthen floor" and ate "johnny-cake, squirrels, buffalo-hump, dampers, and buckwheat, tea and corn spirit, with a crowd of emigrants, hunters, and adventurers..."
Such an adventure! No time to write more. Back on the steamer returning to Rock Island and then a train to Chicago.
In 1854 the train tracks were extended to Rock Island, Illinois, on the bank of the Mississippi River. The first bridge across the Mississippi was completed two years later.
The train engine
Rock Island, Illinois, 1854.