I must say that Mr. Pfannkuche knows his stuff.
Railroads in McHenry County.
The Fox River Valley Railroad went between Elgin, Illinois, and Walworth County, Wisconsin. The KD Line went from Kenosha, Wisconsin to Genoa Junction (now Genoa City), Wisconsin, then to Hebron/Alden and then west to Rockford.
The first McHenry County residents in the 1830s came here to be self-sufficient farmers. Once they had established themselves and grew enough for their own consumption, thoughts then turned to cash crops. With the wonderful soil and fairly flat vistas in the county, the first big cash crop was wheat. And that all worked out perfectly for new technology such as the McCormick Reaper.
Sadly, wheat rust came and destroyed the crop, so the farmers turned to something else that grew well, hay grasses, the feed of cattle and that caused dairy farming to become king. Only, they needed a way to get this product, with its limited shelf-life to market.
It was a very opportune time for the arrival of trains and railroads.
Gail Borden built his milk condensing plant in Elgin and from there his condensed milk was sent all over the United States and the world.
A Milk a Day. --DaCoot
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