Our Pick
Posted on @rawstates
Turner Junction, where two Illinois railroads first crossed
1849
West Chicago, Illinois
The Galena and Chicago Union pushed west out of Chicago and reached this prairie in 1849, and the St. Charles branch line met it here the same year, making the first railroad junction in the state. The place was platted as Junction, then as Turner after the railroad's president John B. Turner, and people called it Turner Junction for decades before it settled on West Chicago. Railroad work and later a Campbell's vegetable farm camp out on Prince Crossing Road brought Mexican families, a good many of them from Michoacan, and that migration is the reason about half the city is Latino today.
That was 1 of the hidden places.
Location: city-level
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