Before the days of globalization, heavy industry used to build this country had to come from right here. As such, the manufacturing of steel was of the utmost importance in the late 19th century. And while steel continues to be an extremely important industry, much like the railroad industry, steel production has become much more efficient over time, making relatively small plants obsolete, which is what would happen to the Joliet Iron Works.
Joliet Iron Works in 1901. The mainline of the Illinois Central (now CN) ran right through it. Most of the side tracks are abandoned.
One can even see this consolidation in the corporate history of the Works. The Joliet works was built by the Joliet Iron and Steel Company in 1869. Twenty years later, the Illinois Steel Company acquired it, and Illinois Steel itself was acquired by Federal Steel, which would form US Steel, which is still in business to this day.
The area was renovated in 2009, and is easy to access, if in a somewhat secluded part of downtown Joliet. Visiting early on a Saturday morning, there were few other people there, but it was far from empty.
Located just off of the former Route 66 (today's IL-53) on Columbia St in Joliet.
Heading north from the parking lot, you can see the ruins of an abandoned railroad line which ran over the still very active CN line. This would have connected both sides of the Works together.
Walking up what's left of the bridge.
There are many "KEEP OFF" signs throughout the park, and it's not hard to figure out why when dealing with ruins.
Tons of signs dominate the area, explaining the history and significance of the individual parts of the site.
From how many abandoned railroads are in IL, and PA, this is not surprising.
On the other side of the tracks, more abandoned but inaccessible buildings lay dormant. I wonder if there'll ever be an opportunity to visit those!
Another building. Graffiti was rampant on that side. It should be noted that these buildings are immediately south of the Old Joliet Prison.
Back to the actual ruins here though, the trail diverges here between the I&M canal trail and the walk through the ruins.
This is one part of the ruins that is easier to see from the I&M Canal Trail than the actual walking tour.
The stoves are the largest ruin, much to explore here, more so if you're adventurous enough to ignore the KEEP OUT signs and peek inside.
More piers for a railroad bridge to connect both sites above the tracks.
This ramp was one of the few ruins that you could walk on.
Below the ramp. Hard to imagine these arches are only about 150 years old!
Some graffiti in the ruins below.
The Will County Forest Preserve also made a YouTube Video of a drone flying over the site below;
If you're near the area, there are few places which give such a unique perspective on local history. What many would see as blight is so much more. It is definitely worth seeing for yourself.
This is the story of a small part of the creation of the World as we know it, as both the steel industry and the railroad industry were codependent on each other, as was society for being able to create larger and larger skyscrapers, and the cities we've grown accustomed to today. As always, thanks for reading!
Our Abandoned and Out of Service Railroad Lines Map of lines across the world has gotten a ton of views and support from people across all sorts of interests and knowledge bases. For that, I thank you! But I never really explained how I came to find all of these lines. So with that in mind, today's blog is going to go over how to use Google My Maps to create your own maps for people to find and view and criticize. This blog is essentially my love letter to My Maps, as the platform has (thankfully) remained a part of the Google Suite, and I sincerely hope it never goes the way of Google Fusion Tables. Of course, the magic of Google My Maps is that you can create maps of pretty much anything, without having to learn incredibly complex GIS systems and selling your soul to ESRI for a license to use ArcGIS. Google My Maps is incredibly intuitive for building vector data (points, lines and polygons), and to this day, when I am building vector maps for use in ArcGIS, I will often u
The Interstate Highway System is a marvel of engineering, even in spite of its cost. There are over 46,000 interstate miles in the US. Surely, not all of them are necessary. Some can even be considered pointless. A 1958 map of what was completed of the original interstate highway act, which has since been added upon in a significant way. Image: WTTW What makes a highway pointless, especially one built to the highest road standards in the world? It can be length, as many of these routes are only a mile or two in length, but it doesn't have to be. There are quite useful interstate highways that nonetheless very short (I-190 in Illinois and I-238 in California are good examples). Another qualification is the area they serve; many of these routes either don't connect to a significantly populated area, or don't facilitate downtown traffic. And while some of them most certainly do fulfill these criteria; they could do so without being labeled as an Interstate Highway.
As we've done for the States of Illinois , Rhode Island and Florida , we've completed a static map of Abandoned and Out of Service Railroad Lines based on the abandonments, railbanked corridors, and out-of-service lines in the State of Washington. Abandoned/Out-of-Service Railroad Corridors in Washington State, 2021. FRRandP creation in QGIS using Mapbox Streets v10 as a background and state/county lines from US Census data. Clicking on this image will bring up the map in its original size. This data was gathered by us over the last five years and is available on our Abandoned & Out of Service Railroad Lines Map , and where we had missing/incomplete data, we pulled data from the WSDOT GIS Data Catalog , who maintains a shapefile of railroads active and abandoned in the State. Neither ours nor WSDOT's data is completely encompassing however, as there are numerous logging railroads that have not been mapped, many of which have little/no traces left, similar to our map in
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