"The Yards" has experienced tremendous growth, led…
September 1870 CE
The Yards will operate in the New City community area of Chicago, Illinois for one hundred and six years, helping the city become known as "hog butcher for the world" and the center of the American meatpacking industry for decades.
Before construction of the Union Stock Yard & Transit Company, or The Yards, tavern owners had provided pastures and care for cattle herds waiting to be sold.
With the spreading service of railroads, stockyards had been created in and around the city.
In 1848, small stockyards were scattered throughout the city along various rail lines.
There was a confluence of reasons necessitating consolidation of the stockyards: westward expansion of railroads, causing great commercial growth in a Chicago that has evolved into a major railroad center; the Mississippi River blockade during the Civil War that had closed the north-south river trade route; the influx of meat packers and livestock to Chicago.
To consolidate operations, the Union Stock Yards had been built on swampland south of the city.
A consortium of nine railroad companies (hence the "Union" name) had acquired a three hundred and twenty-acre- (one point three square kilometer-) swampland area in southwest Chicago for $100,000 in 1864.
The stockyards are connected to the city's main rail lines by fifteen miles (twenty-four kilometers) of track.
Eventually, the three hundred and seventy-five-acre (one point fifty-two square kilometer-) site will have twenty-three hundred separate livestock pens in addition to hotels, saloons, restaurants, and offices for merchants and brokers.
Commodities
Regions
Northern North America
View →Subregions
