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Reflections: Getting Kendall County’s livestock to market · Kendall County News - Shaw Local

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  Speaker 1: Lispections getting Kendall County's livestock to market. This article is
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  being read by an automated voice brought to you by Everlett.
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  Everybody knows where meat comes from. The grocery store. Modern
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  consumers can buy a wide variety of packaged meats, ranging
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  from your standard hamburger to newer items such as skinless
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  chicken breasts and even frozen portions of chicken kiev, provided
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  they've been saving up these days. Back in the eighteen hundreds,
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  the selection not to mention the quality of the meats
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  consumers could buy was a lot slimmer, But the constant
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  has always been that meat has offered farmers an easier,
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  more compact way to get their grain to market. In
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  Kendall County, the earliest farmers grew livestock as well as grain. Chickens, pigs, cattle, sheep,
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  and a variety of other animals were grown on the small,
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  diversified and subsistence farms of the nineteenth century. In the
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  area's history, farmers found markets for both livestock and grain
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  in the towns that grew up along the county's main
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  roads and along the Fox River. The inns that offered
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  lodging and stagecoach team changing stations along the county's earliest roads.
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  The trails from Chicago to Ottawa to the southwest and
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  Galina to the northwest needed food for their customers, both
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  human and ek wine. The inns around which pioneer farms
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  were located therefore became some of the earliest markets for
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  farm produce. Platteville, Yorkville, Lisbon, and Oswego all boasted stagecoach
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  inns and became early farm produce markets, as well as
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  more and more farmers began settling on Kendall County's prairies.
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  The area's small villages couldn't absorb all the area's farm production,
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  so excess grain and meat was either taken overland to
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  Ottawa or Chicago. Both Kendalls towns and farmers benefited from
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  the extension of the Chicago, Burlington and damp Quincy Railroad
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  through the county in eighteen fifty fifty three and its
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  Fox River branch in eighteen seven. Do Using the SEB
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  and q's main line, livestock could be shipped directly to
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  the growing Chicago market, and with the construction of the
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  Fox River branch line up the east side of the
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  Fox River. More farms were within easy reach of a railhead.
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  Yorkville had stockyards on both sides of the Fox River,
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  where cattle and hogs were herded from the country. By
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  the eighteen seventies, Oswego, too boasted a stockyard between the
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  railroad tracks and the Fox River, with a loading choote
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  along the tracks east of North Adams Street. Holding pens
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  were located between North Adams and the river. There were
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  also two slaughterhouses along the Fox River, one near Wobonzi
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  Creek's mouth and the other off South Adams Street. Put
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  it on there five minutes, flip it over the other
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  five minutes. You're done. Then the key the key to this.
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  You tent it, bring it inside, tent it, put a
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  couple of pieces of foil over it, tant it for
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  about five to ten minutes. That keeps it so juicy.
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  And I gotta tell you, I've won my wife over
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  on this. My son, who did not really eat meat,
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  absolutely loves at ast for steak every week. So that
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  is my stake advice. After the end of the Civil War,
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  a joint venture of Chicago's major railroads and the Chicago
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  Pork Packers Association built the Chicago Union Stockyards on the
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  city's south side. The yards were laid out by the
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  chief engineer of the Chicago and damp Alton Railroad on
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  a one hundred and sixty acre site west of Halsted Street.
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  The Chicago Yards were a marvel of their time, and
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  within a few years were able to handle twenty one
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  thousand head of cattle, seventy five thousand hogs, twenty one
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  thousand sheep, and two hundred horses in two thousand, three
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  hundred pens. Built on sixty acres, the yards also featured
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  the sixth story Huff House hotel and the Exchange Building,
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  where livestock deals were made. When modern meat packing techniques
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  were developed in Cincinnati, Chicago businessmen quickly brought them to
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  Chicago and perfected them. Within a few years, Chicago was
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  not only the main livestock market in the US, but
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  it also was the nation's largest meat packing center. All
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  of this activity was partly fueled by farmers living in
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  Chicago's hinterland, including Kendall County. Local farmers drove herds of
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  livestock into Chicago or sent them there by rail, and
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  often personally dealt with the men who would one day
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  become the kings of the nation's meat packing business, including
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  Philip Armor and Gustavus Swift. In nineteen eighty six, Yorkville's
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  Gerald Matlock recalled of his great grandfather. Great grandfather's first
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  name was West and mister Armour's first name was Philip.
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  They greeted one another as West or phil When their
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  business was finished, the horses were stabled in a large
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  barn where they would be fed and cared for for
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  fifty cents a day if Armor furnished the feed, and
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  for twenty five cents if you brought your own feed.
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  One winter, they had a butchering bee at the Matlock
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  farm which they killed and dressed eighty three hogs. These
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  were hung in trees to freeze in preparation for the
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  trip to Chicago on bob sleds. Although overland droves continued,
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  by the late eighteen seventies, most of the livestock heading
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  for Chicago was going by train, which turned out helping
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  the small village of Montgomery. The CBNQ owned a huge
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  mined out gravel pit on the west side of the
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  river at Montgomery, the land available for other purposes. Coincidentally,
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  an eighteen zent to nine law mandated that livestock transported
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  across state lines by rail had to be fed and
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  watered at least every twenty four hours. So to take
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  care of the growing volume of various kinds of livestock
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  shipped over its main line, the CBNQ built a huge
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  sheepyard at conveniently located Montgomery in eighteen ninety two. As
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  the Kendall County Record reported, the pens and yards will
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  cover fifteen or twenty acres and will be built in
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  the old gravel pit just north of the village. Sheep
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  that are shipped over the Chicago Burlington and Damp Quincy
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  and the Chicago Burlington and Damp Northern lines will be
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  unloaded at Montgomery and there prepared for the market. They
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  will then be shipped to Chicago in car load lots
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  or several cars at a time as wanted. The yards,
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  just like Chicago's, featured their own hotel where stockmen stayed
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  while waiting for their livestock to take their final journey
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  into Chicago. Eventually, the Montgomery Yards became the largest sheep
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  transport facility of its kind in the world. Today, the
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  nation's interstate Highway system and the trucks that travel it
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  have made both cattle drives and the old system of
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  stockyards obsolete. The Yorkville and Oswego stockyards are long gone,
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  only dim memories of them remain for even the oldest
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  area residents. The sprawling Montgomery yards have also vanished, and
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  the Chicago yards themselves also have disappeared into the history books.
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  The end of the old system marked the end of
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  a way of life that fueled the Midwest prosperity for
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  almost one hundred years. Interested in more local history, visit
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  Day