Forgotten Lands, Places and Transit

There are very few single lane bridges in northeast Illinois remaining, and for mostly good reasons, as the ones that remain are typically substandard and have a streak of being hit by box trucks . Nonetheless, one that I was very sad to see close was in the town adjacent to my hometown, Plainfield's truss bridge over the DuPage River. Roger McCredie, Photographer, December 1991  In a historical narrative about the bridge , historian John B Nolan noted that, as of 1995, it was "the last surviving through truss in Will County, and an example of a bridge type once familiar in Illinois. This truss, built by the Wrought Iron Bridge Company." Before I realized that railroad rights of way were often easily identifiable via aerial images, one of my favorite pastimes was to look at old and unique railroad crossings on Google Maps.  However, this particular crossing wasn't one I'd discovered on Google, but rather out on one of my frequent drives to nowhere; the EJE (now C...

If you ever find yourself on a drive down Addison Road between North Avenue and Lake Street, you pass a strangely wide strip of land on the west side of the road - too broad for a sidewalk, too linear for a park, too empty to be accidental. That strip once carried a railroad. There were two Addison Railroads that operated in the United States, one in Illinois and one in Vermont, and each had no relation to the other. The Vermont Addison Railroad became part of the Rutland Railroad, and is discussed in another blog. The Addison Railroad (in Illinois) once occupied the large easement on the west side of Addison Rd between IL-64 (North Av) to just north of US-20 (Lake St) in Addison, IL, about two miles in length. Built in 1890, it was incorporated into the Chicago Madison & Northern Railroad , which itself became part of the Illinois Central by 1892. Under the IC, the short spur was simply known as the Addison Branch. Addison Railroad, 1892 . "Illinois Central Train in Addiso...

Across the American landscape, the physical remnants of infrastructure often outlast the memories of the people who built it. Rail alignments fade into forests, canals become property lines, and tunnels persist long after their original purpose is forgotten. Few sites better illustrate this imbalance between enduring infrastructure and erased labor than Hawks Nest, West Virginia , a place where industrial ambition, hydroelectric power, and human catastrophe intersected inside a mountain. I first heard about this disaster on a podcast called Lawless Planet , which goes in depth into environmental disasters and general criminal activity as it relates to the clean energy transition. I highly recommend it as far as podcasts go, and that's coming from someone who typically dislikes the true crime genre. It should be noted that non-fossil fuel based energy sources are nothing new; and the Hawks Nest Dam project, were it constructed today, would likely be labeled as a clean energy project...