“By any means necessary” was no overstatement when it came to the life-or-death flight to freedom through Illinois ... Railroad. John and Eliza Little walked hundreds of miles from Cairo ...

ABOVE: An 1870 ad for the Illinois Central Railway touted a trip from Chicago to Cairo — ‘without change of Cars.’ BELOW: That railroad arose out of a pair of land-grant bills introduced two ...

Railroad history in Illinois began in Meredosia in 1838. The Northern Cross was the first railroad west of the Allegheny Mountains and North of the Ohio River to use a steam locomotive.