Alton & Sangamon Railroad

Alton and Sangamon Railroad. . , "Drive the Locomotive through our land, and you will have business, activity, prosperity, and mettle." -Benjamin Godfrey, In 1834, a group of visionaries in Springfield, Illinois, led by Abraham Lincoln, proposed laying railroad tracks between the Mississippi River and Sangamon County. A group of six men from Alton, led by Benjamin Godfrey, secured the charter for the Alton and Sangamon Railroad on February 27, 1847., Construction materials arrived in Alton in the summer of 1850, and by January 1851, 779 men were working on the project. Benjamin Godfrey lived in a railroad car to follow the work as it progressed. In 1851, Abraham Lincoln won a civil suit for Godfrey that ensured the solvency of the Alton and Sangamon Railroad. He wrote letters in support of the railroad and owned six shares of Alton and Sangamon stock, worth $600. , The railroad was completed to Springfield in September 1852, and it later became part of the Chicago and Alton Railroad. Godfrey's freight house also opened in 1852 at the corner of what is now West 5th Street and Piasa Street. The freight house was razed in 1971 to make way for the William L. Beatty Federal Building.