I will skip a lot of railroad history about Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Illinois.  If such history becomes relevant, I will update the blogs or posts as necessary.  To get a sense of pre-modern day NWI and Illinois, check out http://oprt.org/history-1.htm.

There are numerous moving parts to the begins of railroad history in Northwest Indiana.  I will be very careful with how I describe them and to be as accurate as possible.  Also, you may see me interchange the name a lot from “The G&W” to “DPB”.  Just note that I am referring to the Dune Park Branch.

NWI looked slightly different back before the G&W was built.  Before the railroads, trails were used for wagon trains and foot travel.  The trails were first created by Natives, and subsequently acquired by legal and illegal means by the Federal Government and private enterprise.  Plank roads were laid out on a lot of these trails.  The plank roads later became track beds for the major railroads, more-or-less.

I am not quite sure but I believe that the Buffalo & Mississippi Railroad was the first railroad in the region, being chartered February 6th, 1835.  It was not built west that far beyond Michigan City.  Its name was change to Northern Indiana Railroad (NIR) on February 6th, 1837 and it ran from the eastern boarder of Indiana to Michigan City and southeast from Michigan City to LaPorte.

Michigan Southern Railroad (MS) planned to use NIR’s line in its push to Chicago, and operations began November 30th, 1850.  The MS & MC mergers continued to accelerate throughout the mid-to-late 1800′s.  There were numerous name changes, so numerous that I will not waste time listing them all in this post.

As far as I can surmise, rivals Michigan Central (MC) & Michigan Southern Railroad (MS) were the first two major railroads to cross NWI and access Chicago, with MC being the very first, being maddeningly aggressive with MS in its push from Michigan to Chicago.  MS had to use some legal trickery in order to cross more than three miles into Indiana.  MS & MC were able to build their connections to Chicago through a series of mergers with smaller railroads into themselves.  

Here’s a photo of railroads and pipelines dated 1900.*mistakenly labeled 1850

Let’s get a little bit closer.

You can see by 1900 there were several railroads coming through the area.  The DPB is apart of this, but it’s running through the southern portion of where US Steel sits today.  This is a detail that I believe most people don’t realize, and it will have severe consequences for the G&W in the future.  

In spite of MC’s aggression, MS’s fortunes changed.  NIR eventually merged with MS to form Michigan Southern & Northern Indiana Railroad (MS&NIR) in 1855.  The Cleveland, Painesville and Ashtabula Railroad (CP&A), which did not operate in Indiana, leased the Cleveland and Toledo Railroad (C&T) in 1867.  CP&A changed its name to Lake Shore Railway (LSR) a year later and in 1869 LSR merged C&T into itself.  That same year, MS&NIR merged with LSR to form the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway (LS&MS).  

These strategically important series of mergers allowed for the LS&MS to extend from Chicago to Buffalo, NY... as well as whatever ROW’s it had in Michigan and elsewhere in the Midwest.

And finally, the final piece of this puzzle.  In 1877 New York Central & Hudson River Railroad (NYC&HR) took notice of the LS&MS.  It bought majority stock and became the owner of the entire LS&MS system.  This led to the creation of the new New York Central Railroad (NYC).  This action would leave NYC as top dog in the region, with MC being a rival.

Now - let’s talk about Indiana Harbor Railroad (IHR) and Illinois, Indiana & Iowa Railroad (II&I) or (3I/Old Three I/3 Eye Route).  The 3I was a successful coal running railroad that terminated in Churchill, SE of Ladd, IL (southwest of Joliet).  3I built the portion of the line that went from Streator, IL to South Bend, IN.  Only a small segment of the Indiana line is still in use.

The photo below shows a line map.  The blue line is the Norfolk Southern (NS) Kankakee Route.  This is a part of the old 3I Kankakee Belt.  The red lines indicate portions of the line that are now abandoned.  I bring it up because the 3I line used to connect to the Chicago line via the Kankakee Belt @ South Bend.

IHR - different from the Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad -  was incorporated April 17th, 1896 in Illinois.  In 1901 Indiana Harbor (now East Chicago), a city, was constructed to accommodate the Calumet region’s shipping needs, centered around IHR.  MC and LS&MS financed the endeavor.  In 1905 IHR purchased track from MC in the Calumet District of Chicago, and track that lead to Union Stock Yards. MC & LS&MS obtained whole stock in IHR October 31, 1907, changing the name to Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad (IHBR).  This brought the IHR into the NYC system.  NYC made Charles W. Hotchkiss General Manager, as Hotchkiss was the creator of the IHR.  

Now this bit is confusing Firstly... on August 9th, 1906 NYC merged the 3I with IHR and the Danville and Indiana Harbor Railroad to form the Chicago, Indiana and Southern Railroad (CI&S).  YET on the other hand, IHR was reorganized into the IHBR.  The confusion comes into play because I’ve read in other forums people who’ve said that IHR was completely different from IHBR, and I find that to be highly unlikely.  The IHR is only different from the IHBR in the sense that IHBR was brought into the NYC system through MC & LS&MC's capital stock ownership.

CI&S stock was owned by Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway (LS&MS) as well as Michigan Central Railroad (MC).  Bear with me.  CI&S’s stock was owned by LS&MS and MC.  New York Central (NYC) owned stock in both LS&MS and MC.  Get it?  Got it?  Good.

Here’s the critical part.

MS were the ones who originally built the line that would later become the DPB.  It had track laid that ran west through the north end of Gary.  I believe it was called the Indiana Harbor Lake Shore Line (or branch) or something close to it. 

This can be proven by looking at a map.  Here is the one claiming to be from 1850 again.  I say claiming because on this map it’s labeled LS&MS - yet LS&MS wasn’t incorporated until 1869.

Top right corner - that would be be Baillytown (present day Burns Harbor).  You can clearly see where MC ran into Hobart and MS ran westward into Gary (wasn’t Gary then). The MS line ran exactly along the same route the DPB is now.  It was not built by IHR, though IHR could have operated along the MS/LS&MS later on before being reorganized into IHBR.  You’ll see what I mean below.

We move the map further west and you can see the path that LS&MS took through Gary.  MC’s route can also be seen.  See the shaded area at the center of the photo labeled “New Stock Yards”?  That’s the property that will later become US Steel.  It is unknown to me who first deemed this area to become stock yards before US Steel got involved.  Little known fact: There was a lighthouse on the US Steel shoreline.  It was first lit in 1837.  There is a newer lighthouse built in 1911 that is still in use today but not publicly accessible.

When US Steel bought this property, the LS&MS ran right through it on the southernmost end of the shaded area.  LS&MS had to remove a large section of its Lake Shore track, in 1904 - before the steel mill was built.  Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (B&O) also had to remove their tracks, but it was not cut off like LS&MS was.  We’ll get to that in a future post.

CI&S founded the Gary & Western Railway Company (G&W) the same year construction of US Steel commenced.  Some accounts I’ve read say that the G&W was a purely CI&S venture with NYC, others say basically that the G&W was a subsidiary of US Steel and was operated by CI&S.  I can’t say either way - a big grey area there.  Until proven otherwise - I’ll say that G&W was a subsidiary of US Steel and US Steel worked with CI&S to build it.  I seem to remember reading this somewhere, but I can’t remember the source.

According to the ‘Biennial Report of Fred A. Sims Secretary of State of the State Of Indiana for the Fiscal Term Ending September 30, 1908’ - on October 6th, 1906 the G&W received $200,000 in stock.

According to an Indianapolis Star article published Sunday, October 7th, 1906 - Articles of Incorporation were drafted with Secretary of State Fred. A Sims the day before - October 6th, 1906.  It stated as follows:

“Gary and Western Railroad Company, to build nine miles of track in Lake County as part of the Chicago, Indiana & Southern Railroad - capital stock, $200,000.”

G&W rebuilt the LS&MS line through Gary, moving it to the south of US Steel and elevating its route to avoid grade crossings.  The G&W DPB was a single track, standard-gage, steam railroad.  It’s westernmost end begins at Gibson Yard in Hammond, Indiana, heading east through Ivanhoe Junction in Gary, curling north over Route 12/20 (5th Avenue).  The eastern portion of the elevated line reconnected with the remaining portion of the original IHR/CI&S line east of Gary Works at a point known as “G&W Junction”.  From this junction, the G&W continued east, terminating just west of the area known now as Burns Harbor at a huge sand pit.

LS&MS is who is cited most often for the creation of the DPB, but it is evident that CI&S, maybe in conjunction with US Steel, was the one responsible for reconnecting it after it was removed.  It’s hard to nail down exactly when the original track bed was lain by MS between Burns Harbor and Chicago but I estimate that MS did so at least 50 years prior to the construction of US Steel.