Thomas Stillwell Huntley was scouting out a place to settle in the mid-1800s when he learned the railroad was coming to the area.

He decided to plunk down on property near the future railroad, now within the village of Huntley.

The businessman set up a general store near the tracks and donated property around the station to the village, which took on the name of Huntley Grove.

When trains began rolling through the community in the early 1850s, the area started to blossom.

The railroad created economic opportunities for farmers. Every day, by horse-drawn carts, farmers would haul their milk to the station. From there, the trains chugged the milk to Chicago.

Because of the easy access to the railroad, Huntley secured its position as one of the premier milk-transport centers of the world by the turn of the century. Each day, a total of 9,600 gallons of milk was brought into the village from surrounding dairy farms and then shipped to Chicago.

To this day, the village still is a top milk-transport center, boasting Dean Foods as one of its staple businesses.

Like Huntley, many communities in the Fox Valley - including Hampshire, Crystal Lake and Cary - sprouted up because of the railroad.

Other communities, however, virtually disappeared because they didn't get the railroad.

At one time, Coral, which was near Huntley and Union, was the only spot west of Elgin to get mail. But once the railroad route missed Coral and headed to Union and Huntley instead, that community stopped growing.

Lawrence, west of Harvard, had big plans for development.

But Lawrence put too high a price on its property, and the railroad passed it by for Harvard. The village dwindled down to nothing compared with Harvard, which became a stop on the Fon du Lac Line, established in 1857.

Harvard became the railroad center of McHenry County, with a roundhouse boasting 25 engines and a turnaround site for Chicago.

"In the 19th century, you were on a railroad line or you died," said Nancy Fike of the McHenry County Historical Society. "It was the lifeline."

The railroad did become the lifeline for many communities lining the tracks. It became their economic development tool.

The railroad was the primary mover of goods and people into and out of the area. Trains carried deliveries of lumber, coal, feed, fertilizer, groceries, express mail and telegrams.

Easy access to the trains allowed Crystal Lake to ship blocks of ice from its lake to communities closer to Chicago. Cary, which had earth rich in minerals, shipped gravel to the big city.

At one time, Crystal Lake, McHenry and Union all had stockyards near the stations, which allowed those communities to ship out their animals, Fike said.

Conversely, the railroad brought people such as grocers, salesmen and tourists to the area.

The salesmen would stay in hotels in communities near the rail lines, such as Hampshire, Huntley and Union. Those communities boomed because residents of neighboring areas ventured in to buy goods.

In the summer months, tourists hopped the trains in Chicago and ventured out to Cary, Algonquin and Fox River Grove to spend their days along the Fox River. The trains actually helped those communities develop into summer tourist meccas, spurring the development of more hotels and restaurants.

While Elgin, and most communities nestled along the Fox River, popped up long before the railroad reached them, the lines did help those communities develop.

Elgin was founded in 1835, but the railroad didn't reach it until 1850. But, when it did, it brought people into the community from places such as Carpentersville and South Elgin to work, said Elgin historian Jerry Turnquist.

In addition to trains, the streetcars also brought hordes of workers to Elgin's factories. Today, many area bike paths run on the remnants of those streetcar lines, Turnquist said.

The fact that it was convenient to reach Elgin by train helped the community develop industrially. City leaders enticed factories into the community because Elgin had access to such a large worker pool.

Eventually, paved roads and automobiles started to replace the frequent use of rail lines throughout the Fox Valley. But those lines are still credited with the early development of many area communities, Fike said.

"The railroad was what made many of these communities," Fike said. "They developed and stayed around because of it."

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