In 1894 it was cheaper and more convenient to travel by streetcar between cities in the Calumet Region and points in Chicago than it was by traditional passenger railroads.
Because streetcars offered more trips each day, people could almost always catch a streetcar on a schedule that met their needs.
The advantages of cheaper prices and more frequent trips were a challenge to the steam railroads. As a result, conventional passenger railroads were in fierce competition with the streetcars. They often refused streetcar companies even the right to cross their tracks.
A Record Local Streetcar Ride In 1894
Jerry Banik, June 2022
In 1894, a surprisingly lengthy article appeared in the Chicago Tribune, telling the story of a Chicago man who, with nothing better to do, decided to spend a day riding streetcars and transfering from one to another to see how far he could travel and where he’d end up.
The man’s big adventure started in Evanston and ended up in Hammond, which is good for us because along the way we get the writer’s impressions of 1894 Roby, Whiting, East Chicago and Hammond.
It’s good for us in the sense of the history it conveys, but maybe less good for our egos.
As we might expect, some of our Chicago neighbors even back then tended to look down their noses at Hoosiers. But not only at us.
Our Illinoisan traveler climbed on the trolley at Evanston headed south, and made “lightning” transfers at the end of each streetcar’s line to another line.
We pick him up at “the limits of Chicago”, the Indiana state line, where he thought “he had reached the end of the earth and could ride no farther”.
Even back in 1894 we frontier folk had street car service here, and ours, established in 1893, was called the Hammond, Whiting and East Chicago Electric Railway. It operated until the 1940s.
Imagine that! Streetcar service in Indiana, the land beyond the end of the earth! But having set out to travel as far as streetcars could carry him, Chicago’s intrepid explorer was conscience bound to journey on.
Boarding the streetcar at Roby, he soon found he was not the only passenger.
The conductor “wasn’t running no freight car” for no Russkies in Indiana, if you’ll pardon my objurgations. Our passenger was in Hammond, alright. And those Turkish women? They were gew-gaw peddling leftovers from the Midway at the Columbian Exposition World’s Fair in Jackson Park the year before.
If you were to use the statistics our traveler cites at the end of this article and do the math, not that it’s necessary nor recommended, you’d see that the South Chicago cars went “like the wind” at 9 miles per hour. Our electrified, 11 mph Indiana cars were breathtakingly faster. So we had that going for us, which is nice.
Our horses raced out of season and our racetracks smelled. Oddly there was no mention of the stench of Chicago’s Union Stockyards when our man passed them, nor of the odor of manure along the two stretches in Chicago where the streetcars were still horse drawn.
Unprepossessing: “Not tending to create a favorable impression; unattractive, unappealing”. Meh.
Then, this:
Did Hammond’s sporting gents really battle Hessvillians in the streets, and even bring along a handcar knowing they’d need it to carry home their dead? Apparently they thought so in Evanston.
It seems the directionally challenged writer failed to realize the only thing due north of Whiting was water. Still is.
At the end of our man’s odyssey stood downtown Hammond. Ancient and honorable Hammond. Home to people so unsophisticated they didn’t realize the Grand Calumet was not really grand at all. So un-grand, in fact, that genteel folk needed to surround its name with quotation marks.
The Tribune’s article didn’t tells us, but hopefully our traveler had enough money left to get himself back to Evanston. A fastidious man, he had made a dutiful accounting of his journey:
Four hours. Ten streetcars. Forty-five cents. No mention of all the friends he surely must have made in Indiana along the way. Hopefully he made it home safely, and that on his return ride through The Region he didn’t risk expressing too many of his disparaging thoughts about Hoosiers out loud. They might have been met by more than just objurgations.