Galena Air Line Railroad

City: Galena

County: Jo Daviess County

State: Illinois

The Galena Air Line Railroad, also known as the Dixon Air Line Railroad, was completed in 1854 as an addition to the Galena and Chicago Railroad and served as a shortcut to the Mississippi River. It crossed the Fox River at Geneva, the seat of Kane County, and ran a few miles south of Sycamore by Franklin Grove to Dixon. An extension then went on to Fulton on the Mississippi.

The Air Line also went by the name of the Chicago, Fulton, and Iowa Central Railroad and formed the shortest route—135 miles—from Chicago to the Mississippi River.

Illinois State Register (Springfield), 15 December 1853, 4:2; The Rail-Roads, History and Commerce of Chicago, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Democratic Press, 1854), 7; Fred. Gerhard, Illinois as it is (Chicago: Keen and Lee, 1857), 415, 429, 430.