| The name Chicago derives
from a word in the language spoken by the Miami and
Illinois peoples meaning striped skunk, a word they
also applied to the wild leek (known to later botanists
as Allium tricoccum). This became the Indian name for
the Chicago River, in recognition of the presence of
wild leeks in the watershed. When early French explorers
began adopting the word, with a variety of spellings,
in the late seventeenth century, it came to refer to
the site at the mouth of the Chicago River.
The Chicago & North Western Railway,
created during the late 1850s by the merger of several
small railroads in Illinois and Wisconsin, was led during
its early years by William B. Ogden, Chicago's first
mayor. In 1864, the Chicago & North Western absorbed
the Galena & Chicago Union, which in 1848 had been
the city's first railroad. Between 1872 and 1910, under
the leadership of Marvin Hughitt, the length of track
in the road's rail network grew from about 1,400 miles
to nearly 10,000 miles. The railroad served areas concentrated
in Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota. Although
the company went bankrupt during the Great Depression,
it survived into the second half of the twentieth century.
By 1961, the Chicago & North Western Railway had
over $200 million in annual revenues and about 16,000
employees nationwide. In 1968, it absorbed the Chicago
Great Western, a smaller competitor.
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