The Chicago and Milwaukee Railway was a predecessor of the
Chicago and North Western Railway (C&NW) in the
U.S. states of
Illinois and
Wisconsin.
The Illinois portion was chartered on February 17, 1851, as the Illinois Parallel Railroad.
Its charter permitted construction of a 44.6 mile rail line northward from Chicago through
Waukegan, Illinois to
Wisconsin paralleling
Lake Michigan
Lake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is the second-largest of the Great Lakes by volume () and the third-largest by surface area (), after Lake Superior and Lake Huron. To the east, its basin is conjoined with that o ...
at a distance of no less than ten miles from the lake's west shore. The IPRR's board first met on September 9, 1851. On February 5, 1853, the line's name became the Chicago and Milwaukee Railroad, and construction reached Waukegan on December 19, 1854.
In a major ceremony in
Kenosha, Wisconsin on Saturday May 19, 1855, the line was connected with the Green Bay, Milwaukee and Chicago Railroad (chartered March 13, 1851 in Wisconsin; renamed Milwaukee and Chicago Railroad on March 6, 1857), also exactly 44.6 miles in length. The Chicago and Milwaukee and Milwaukee and Chicago Railroads merged on June 22, 1863, to form the Chicago and Milwaukee Railway.
The
Northwestern Union Railway was merged into this company on January 11, 1881, and on April 12, 1881, it merged with the
Milwaukee and Madison Railway and
Sheboygan and Western Railway to form the
Chicago, Milwaukee and North Western Railway, which was absorbed into the C&NW in June 1883.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Chicago Milwaukee Railway
Defunct Illinois railroads
Railway companies established in 1863
Railway companies disestablished in 1881
Predecessors of the Chicago and North Western Transportation Company
Defunct Wisconsin railroads
American companies established in 1863