Between 1850 and 1860, Illinois' rail system grew to cover the entire state.

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By the early 1800s, great changes were happening in states to the east. In 1817, under Gov. Dewitt Clinton, New York began work on the Erie Canal. By 1825, the canal was complete, connecting Albany on the Hudson River to Buffalo on Lake Erie; 363 miles in length, it had 18 aqueducts over rivers and ravines and 53 locks to raise the elevation in places by 500 feet.

The impacts were extraordinary. New York quickly became the nation's largest city and the No. 1 destination of immigrants to the United States. Western New York saw a string of cities arise along the canal's length. In the new states to the west, Ohio, and subsequently Indiana and Illinois, were swept away in the rush for internal improvements to equal the success to the east: more canals, and quickly enough, railroads.

In 1824, a survey was initiated for an Illinois and Michigan Canal, promising to open a route from the Great Lakes via the Illinois River to the Mississippi River and New Orleans on the Gulf of Mexico. Construction began in 1836.

In 1832, aware of the coming of the canal, Illinois House Speaker Alexander M. Stephens of Jackson County proposed construction of a "central" railroad to be built from Cairo at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers north along the spine of the state to meet the anticipated western terminus of the canal at LaSalle-Peru.

Considering that such a project would have involved the construction of about 300 miles of track through a wild, unpopulated region, it was a most ambitious scheme. Also proposed was an extension to the northwest to Galena, in the vicinity of Dubuque, Iowa, along with two east-west lines. The Southern Cross would run from Alton to Abion; a Northern Cross would run from Quincy to Danville.

It all looked like an opportunity too good to be true. In February 1837, the Illinois General Assembly approved the Internal Improvement Act of 1837, and borrowed money to begin the colossal project. But any chance for the scheme to have been a success was dependent on perfect timing.

Unfortunately for the General Assembly, the timing could not have been worse, for before the year was out, the nation was hit with the crash of 1837. Overnight, the bonds issued by the state were worthless and the state was bankrupt, with almost none of the proposed work accomplished.

But the effort for a central railroad did not die. By 1850, two important players had entered the internal-improvements game in Illinois. They were the two United States senators from Illinois, Sidney Breese and Stephen Douglas.

Both had introduced competing bills for grants of public lands to assist in construction of the central railroad. Douglas' bill was approved by Congress and signed into law by President Millard Fillmore, granting 2.6 million acres of land to the state of Illinois to finance railroad construction spanning the state from north to south.

The resources provided by Congress through the land grant were now in the form of federal lands, not paper bonds backed by the state. These lands were in alternating sections, 6 miles on either side of the rights-of-way of the proposed lines, of which there were three.

Similar to the 1837 plan, the main line was to run along the spine of the state from LaSalle-Peru, the terminus of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, to Cairo at the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, as well as a line northwest to Galena and then on to the vicinity of Dubuque.

By this time, Chicago had become a significant player, so it had to be included in the plan. This took the form of a branch line running south-southwest from Chicago to join the main line just north of Centralia. Omitted from the plan were the two proposed northern and southern cross lines that had been called for in the improvements fiasco of 1837.

The granted lands could not be sold by a grantee or its assigns until all of the intervening sections still owned by the government were sold at twice the price of $1.25 an acre that the government had previously charged, thereby creating a revenue-neutral proposition to the federal government. It was up to the Illinois General Assembly to decide how to handle the enterprise.

Historically Speaking This is Chapter 5 of a nine-part series about how Champaign County came to be, from former Champaign Mayor Dannel McCollum. Check in every Tuesday for the latest installments in the local historian's series.