Dakota Diary - 6 - Chicago again and Omaha

June 2-6, 1883

By the evening of June 2nd wewere back in Chicago and staying at the Grand Hotel again. We were
pleased to find that our friend Mr. Lester was also still there, and we decided to go with him to the Chicago Railway Exposition the next day.

It was billed as the first elevated electric railway in the world making a trial run.

We knew about New York City’s  elevated service which began  inthe early 1870s, running in Manhattan on Ninth Avenue and Greenwich Street. It was America's first elevated railroad, but it was
steam-powered. Steam locomotives put out prodigious amounts of smoke and soot - hardly what you'd want to be adding to the already-dirty air of a teeming metropolis. And they were plenty noisy, too.

German inventor and industrialist Werner Siemens built a short, small-scale electric railway at the 1879 Berlin Industrial Exhibition.  Thomas Edison and Stephen D. Field started the Electric Railway Company in the spring of 1883 with a capital of $2 million. They aimed to dazzle the crowds at the Chicago Railway Exposition, and they did. They built a narrow-gauge 3-foot-wide track in the gallery around the edge of the main exhibition building, with tight curves at each end of the 1,552-foot track - less than one-third of a mile long.

The locomotive weighs 3 tons and is 12 feet long by 5 feet wide. It draws current by rubbing a wire
brush on each side of an electrified, central third rail. The 15-horsepower locomotive pulls a passenger car at a stately 9 mph. We had a ride, and it was great fun.

Having sent off our two articles about the Wild West Show to Mr. Bennett, I decided to do another one, on the elevated railway ride. And I would do a very good description of our wonderful hotel, to thank the manager for our free stay there.

After our short ride on the railway, Mr. Lester surprised us. “Would you girls consider going on with me as far as Omaha, and then taking the riverboat up to Bismarck from there?”

We had planned on setting off for La Crosse the next day, but as we had given our relatives no firm
date for our arrival, we could just as well visit them on the return trip. And we had been tempted to do a river boat trip anyway, by Buffalo Bill. So we agreed.

Mr. Lester told us, “We have a choice of three routes by which to reach the Union Pacific Railroad
at Omaha. These routes are by railroads forming continuous lines across the states of Illinois and Iowa, namely, the ‘North-Western,’ the ‘Burlington and Quincy,’ and the ‘Rock Island.’ There are
no grounds for preference of any of the three, so far as I know, as they all convey the passenger to their common terminus in equal time and equal comfort. By agreement between their managers, the profits of ‘through’ business are divided proportionately, and they do not compete against each other, but are combined against the more southerly routes on which passengers are conveyed by way of St. Louis. The ‘North-Western’ crosses the Mississippi at Clinton; the ‘Rock Island’ at the city of Rock Island; and the ‘Burlington and Quincy’ at Burlington.”

Mr. Lester made the decision for us, as he said he had a desire to see that section of Iowa along the
line of the ‘North-Western,’ I wrote up my article, and paid to have it sent off to Paris by the first mail on Monday morning, as I had done with the previous articles. I also added a note saying that if he published any of our stories, could he please send a check to Colonel Lounsberry in Bismarck.

We left on the night express train on Saturday evening, June 3rd, at 9.45. We each found a clean
and comfortable sleeping berth ready for our occupancy, and giving the porter directions to call us when we reached the Mississippi River, we went to bed, and were soon fast asleep.

The day was just breaking in the east when I looked out of the car-window. We soon reached Fulton, and crossed the river to Clinton. Mr. Lester started explaining, “The Mississippi Bridge is in two sections, an island about the center of the river dividing it. The first section is of iron, the last of
wood, and both together more than a mile in length. 

This point is about 2,000 miles from the mouth of the river, which is navigable for more than 400
miles farther North.”

I knew that if we taken the train north to Minneapolis, that is where we would be crossing the
Mississippi.

From Clinton to Mount Vernon we passed through what Mr. Lester described as the ‘garden of Iowa.’
The comfortable brick and frame houses, the well-built barns, the fences, the sleek cattle, all spoke of thrift and wealth. Here the land is rolling, well watered, and as productive as on the prairies
of Illinois. They say here, that when a farmer gets his lands paid for, and a little ahead, he builds a brick house. Mr. Lester said that he felt this section was the fairest he has seen during the journey. It reminded him of the country seen in passing from Liverpool to London.

Cedar Rapids, a large town on the Cedar River, was a busy place, where the rapids provide good
facilities for water-power. Leaving it, we reached again prairie-lands, and we passed for 200 miles through a purely agricultural region in which wheat was growing finely and the farmers were busily planting their corn. At one place there were more than 100,000 bushels of the surplus of the previous year’s crop of corn piled in temporary cribs along the line of the railroad to be shipped East.

Mr. Lester told us that Marshall, a town of some importance, 289 miles west of Chicago, was
the terminus of the road until the Union Pacific was begun. From here to Council Bluffs we passed through prairies where plow has never been, and with only here and there a dwelling. Mr. Lester said,
“Along the old stage-road you see the ‘schooners,’ as they call the emigrant wagons, wending their way West. The classes which adopt this style of ‘moving West’ include large numbers who, used to
free roving in pursuit of deer, squirrels, and other game, now complain that the middle states are becoming ‘too thickly settled’ for them. Others are offshoots of thrifty families, now turning pioneers as their fathers were before them. The liberal policy of the Government in giving farms to actual settlers tempts them to abandon the older settlements, where the increase of population renders it
impossible for every one to have a hundred or more acres of land of his own.”

Soon we would be disembarking and starting on the next stage of our adventure, without the
protection and wisdom of Mr. Lester. But before our train let us down at Omaha, as we might have expected, Mr. Lester had some information for us about this town too.

“Omaha is situated about 50 feet above the river at high water mark, and contains a population of
over 17,000. It was the first capital of the state, as it was indeed the first settlement made in the territory. A few squatters were here in 1854, one of whom some time in that year was appointed postmaster, and immediately opened an office ‘in the crown of his hat.’ The town began to spread in 1859; and the commencement of the Union Pacific gave it fresh means for increase, and day by day it grew at wonderful speed. Stores and houses, hotels and ‘saloons,’ were erected; and a few months saw the straggling settlement a busy city, overcrowded with adventurers.”

The streets of Omaha are broad, and laid out at right angles and the ground rises from the river in
such pretty undulations. Then suddenly, out of the beautiful summer day, a storm came up. We were glad we were still in the train.

Mr. Lester said, “They have here such thunder and lightning as we are not accustomed to at home.
One morning when I was here before, I was awakened by deafening thunder, and a more marvelous display of lightning flashes than I had before seen. Not in one part of the heavens, but from horizon to zenith, it was one lurid flame. The rain poured in torrents for more than an hour, and streets and squares were flooded. I thought it a great storm; but the clerk of the hotel called it only a ‘baby-shower,’ and assured me that I ought to be here sometimes to know what a thundershower is.”

Luckily our storm petered out before the train pulled into the station. We were given one last
piece of information as we crossed the bridge.

“This iron bridge which the Union Pacific Company has built over the Missouri River, between Council Bluffs and Omaha, is regarded as one of the finest in the world.” We would be able to compare it to the one we would be writing about in Bismarck.

Mr. Lester said he would break his journey for one night in order to see us safely onto our riverboat. I thought he was overdoing the protective uncle role that he had given himself, but we were pleased to have his company for awhile yet. When we disembarked from the train we followed Mr. Lester into the Paxton Hotel, (pictured above) on Fourteenth and Farnam, which he told us was built last year, to replace one destroyed in a fire, and named in honor of William A. Paxton who had donated five thousand dollars to add a fifth story to the structure.

“The building,” we were told, “contains 175 rooms, including an elegant dining room and a bar. One of the Kitchen Brothers, who between the three of them seemed to own half the hotels in the West, operates the Paxton.”

We heard, as we knew we would, more about Omaha’s history as we had our meal that night in the
dining room.

“As the weather determines, streets are either muddy or dusty. Planking formed the only sidewalks. Every block had its saloon, never closed. Thirteen faro banks, several keno games and numerous poker rooms ran every day and night.”

“It sounds like  a pretty rough place,” said Cora Sue.

“A new invasion of grasshoppers at the start of the 1870's had brought a stream of wretched, beaten settlers into the city. Obviously, these bitter, disillusioned victims could not be controlled effectively in a town where liquor and gambling ran rampant - especially by a police force comprising only 12 men!

“Four of the 12 were on duty at night, when a policeman walking his beat was strictly on his own.
The police station was two blocks from here. There were no patrol wagons, and the cop on the beat had only his nightstick and a shrill whistle.

“To get drunks and other disturbers carted off to jail, the best he could do was to give a blast on the whistle and commandeer an express or delivery wagon - if one could be found. If not, his only choice was to drag his prisoner in bodily.

“Policemen were supposed to work 12 hours, but on quiet nights they often slipped away about
midnight to go to dances at the old Bohemian Hall on South Thirteenth Street. It was during this period of the 12-man force that shootings, robberies and assaults became so out of hand.”

“I'm assuming that it is better now,” I put in. Mr. Lester smiled but didn't allow me to break his chain of thought.

“Votes were openly bought for $1 and up. The voter was escorted to the polling place and personally
aided to make sure he deposited the correct ballot.”

All in all, Omaha didn’t seem a very attractive place to us, and we were glad only to be staying
the one night. We couldn't wait for our adventure on the steamboat to begin.

I was beginning to get a bit nervous about our expenditure. I hoped Mr. Bennett would pay us for
those three articles, and send the money to Bismarck. We had spent $7 each for the train on this extra journey, plus $2.50 for the sleeper, and although Mr. Lester bought us our food, it still comes to another $16.25. That means that over $75 of our $300 has already been spent in just the first week, and who knows what our costs will be for the riverboat trip coming up.