The Early Days

The Early Days. . A Prairie Landscape Heritage, Tribes of Pottawatomie, Kickapoo, and Winnebago were known to have inhabited the region, but the first settlers of Mattoon found mostly open prairie. Timber was scarce and early settlers could see for miles, even as the tall grasses - often as high as a horseman's head - provided cover for animals large and small. Once drained and cultivated in the latter 1800s, the wet and marshy land proved to be extremely fertile and productive soil. , The Lone Elm, In 1934, The Daughters of the American Revolution placed a commemorative marker under the tree that saw a community develop around it., Men of the Big Four Railroad (Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis) on the roundhouse turntable in Mattoon [ca. 1875]., Founders of Mattoon, The Story of a Name, William B. Mattoon - The town was named after William B. Mattoon of Springfield, Massachusetts. He was the chief construction officer for the Terre Haute and Alton Railroad. Many think local landowners chose the Mattoon name in hopes it would spark his financial investment. Other stories say the right to name the town fell to the winner of a railroad track-laying contest. Another version is that Mattoon won the right to the name in a "Seven-up" card game., Ebenezer Noyes began farming in 1834 near what today is Gays in Moultrie County. In 1852, he and five other purchased the location of the original town of Mattoon. He purchased more land in 1855 and declined to have the streets align, causing a "jog" in the east-west streets., Stephen Dexter Dole became one of Mattoon's most influential farmers and entrepreneurs in the 1860s and 1870s. He and his brothers financed construction of The Dole Opera House and the Dole House, the city's leading hotel, in the 1860s., Elisha Linder is credited with introducing sheep to the area. He owned 2,000 acres, including a part of the original section where the town was to grow. His cousin Usher Linder played a leading role in choosing the route of the Terre Haute and Alton Railroad through Charleston., James T. Cunningham was among the founders of Mattoon. As a Congressman for the Coles County area in the Illinois Legislature, he became Abraham Lincoln's best friend in Mattoon. Later he built the first brick elevator and helped found the first bank in 1858., First Railroads, The locomotive shown here, known as "The General" by railroad buffs, had a wood-burning engine that was common at the end of the nineteenth century. Freight cars could be switched between the tracks of the other systems crossing Mattoon. , (photo caption:), The Illinois Central Railroad financed construction of its line by selling land granted to it by the U.S. government. The company placed advertisements like this one along the East Coast and in Europe. The land price in what became Mattoon rose from 69 cents to $2.50 an acre, then skyrocketed to $25 an acre within a year., The Beginnings of a Town, Unlike most cities that began as settlements in proximity to water and timber, Mattoon came into being as a result of the crossing of two rail lines in 1855. Commercial development followed, eventually giving way to growth from the area's bountiful resources such as its rich soil and oil deposits. The earliest known photograph of the developing town of Mattoon shows Broadway, looking east from the Illinois Central tracks in about 1867., (photo captions:), ·The Essex House, the third hotel in Mattoon, opened in 1859 to serve railroad passengers. Abraham Lincoln, Stephen A. Douglas and Ulysses S. Grant all stopped at the Essex House on visits to Mattoon. , ·Opened as Dole House in the 1860s, and known finally as Hotel Byers before being torn down, this landmark stood on the corner of 17th St. and Broadway.