An Elevated Road Which Tried to
Outstrip a Town
INTERESTING bits of history sometimes lie behind big projects—the motives that inspired the undertakings, the difficulties that were encountered in the promotion of the work and various other things that either record success or failure.
In Sioux City in 1890 was built the third elevated railway in the United States. Also Sioux City is said by many to have had the first electrical elevated railroad in the United States.
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What remains in Sioux City, Iowa, of the elevated railroad that more to build than
the suburb it served was worth. The railroad actually ran during the "boom" days of the
80's, but Sioux City, with thirty thousand inhabitants, finally decided she did not need it
It was not necessity that prompted the building of an elevated railway in Sioux City; it was the desire to develop farm land into a suburb of what was destined some day to be the great commercial center of the west. The company collapsed a few years later, but endured long enough to accomplish its one aim—to convert a strip of farm land into a suburb.
In reality Sioux City grew during the years of 1880 and 1893 to a size far out of proportion to the development of its trade territory. The slogan appeared to be: "Build the city first!" instead of permitting the city to expand as the industries of agriculture and cattle-raising expanded.
Sioux City was in the midst of a "boom" between the years of 1880 and 1893. Buildings sprang up within a night. The elevated railroad was one of the "boom" products. Like other projects it fell during the panic of 1893. But unlike numerous other undertakings of magnitude it was not abandoned after the crash, which blighted the dreams of hundreds of men, although at that time it went into the hands of a receiver.
The men who built it believed, of course, that it would be used permanently. The suburb could have been reached as well by surface lines as now—but the purpose was to shorten the distance by building an elevated line which would obviate all railroad crossings.
The elevated road, proper, was about two miles in length. To this was added about three miles of surface lines. The cost of construction for the five miles of railway was $586,000.
On December 7, 1889, the contract for construction work was awarded. Finished within a period of six months, it was used as a steam road until May 5, 1893, when one of the builders and incorporators was appointed receiver. No reverses of importance were experienced by those who financed the work or the construction company. In the rush everything apparently was forgotten. When the panic was precipitated the bonding companies realized their mistake. There had been no demand for such a road in a city that contained only about thirty-thousand inhabitants.
