Rock County's history filled with towns that came and went

JANESVILLE, Wis. (AP) - Gaylen Reilly has lived his entire 56 years within half a mile of Leyden, a place no longer on most maps.

At one time, the unincorporated community northwest of Janesville had a general store, a school, a railroad depot, a tavern, a creamery and maybe a dozen houses.

Today, the businesses are gone and the school is long closed.

Since the 19th century, many tiny communities such as Leyden have come and gone in Rock County, the Janesville Gazette reported (http://bit.ly/1y3bLth).

Only a few historians and people with deep roots know about these forgotten places with colorful names such as Utters Corners, Catfish and Cobbs.

A few communities never found their way out of the planning stages and became known as paper cities.

Among them were Carramana, East Wisconsin City and Saratoga.

Other places were mere stagecoach or railroad stations with unfamiliar names: Anderson, Gano and Hume's Crossing.

Some, such as Bachelor's Grove, may have reflected the kind of people who lived there.

LEYDEN

The tiny settlement in the town of Janesville was once an Irish community.

For Reilly and others who live in the vicinity of County H and Highway 14, Leyden will always be a special place.

"Rural America once had a number of these places," Reilly said. "Leyden is still a point of reference. You'd be surprised how many people will say they know where Leyden is, even though there is nothing there, now."

Some residents say they live in the suburbs of Leyden, which stretch four miles to the Rock River.

Reilly's grandfather bought land in the area in 1907, and Reilly's father, one of 14 children, grew up in Leyden.

Today, the Reilly farm on Highway 14 butts up to the old general store, where farmers once gulped coffee and swapped stories.

"It used to be the local gathering place in the morning where people passed gossip," Reilly recalled. "It was a good place to go in a pinch for milk and pop."

The store closed years ago, but the building remains.

In addition to a general store, Leyden also had a railroad depot.

A train stopped at the station daily early in the last century.

Reilly's aunt, Anna Sullivan, took the train to Janesville at least once a week for catechism classes at St. Mary's.

Eventually, the depot burned, and passenger service stopped.

Reilly saved the Leyden depot sign and placed it in the front yard of the family farm.

"We want to keep the memory of the place alive," he explained.

His family also saved artifacts from the former Leyden School when it closed in the early 1960s.

Reilly has ledgers from the 1860s and 1870s showing expenses for running the school, which is now a rental property. He also has teacher records naming his father, who was a student in the 1930s.

A 1948 book, "Know Rock County," reports that oxen hauled bricks from Milwaukee for a tavern and hotel known as the Leyden House in 1841. The Leyden House stood along what was then called the Madison Road, now Highway 14. Early settlers to the area came to know the building as the halfway point between Janesville and Evansville.

CAINVILLE

The key to whether early communities flourished or died often was the railroad.

"A lot of areas missed the railroad," said Ruth Anderson, archives manager at the Rock County Historical Society. "Some were on the railroad but lost people when the railroad no longer stopped in their community."

Cainville, formerly in the town of Magnolia, was one of them.

The Chicago and Galena line stretched into Cainville in 1858. Seth Cain, for whom the unincorporated place is named, donated land to build a depot.

When the first wood-burning engine pulled a train into town, it could only bring four or five cars.

But they were enough to start a flourishing market. Farmers from miles around went to Cainville to sell their produce and buy supplies.

When the railroad no longer stopped on its way to Madison, the mostly Pennsylvania Dutch and Yankee settlers stopped going as well.

MOUNT ZION

East of Janesville, a tiny settlement known as Mount Zion popped up overlooking the wide-open Rock Prairie in the 1800s.

"If you were coming from Milton, there is a high point where you can look out on the Rock Prairie," Anderson said. "From up there, you could see all the glorious farmland below. Settlers knew that's where you could grow the best crops in Rock County."

A 1908 History of Rock County explains that clergymen traveling from the north to Chicago stopped at the high point.

One clergyman, excited by the hilltop view, exclaimed: "This is Mount Zion."

Later, a school, a church and a cemetery were all part of the place, populated mostly with farmers from New England and some industrious Scotch, English and German immigrants.

As time passed, many ghost towns were forgotten.

Who still remembers More's Prairie or Morse's Landing? Willowdale or Wirt? Fairfield or Fellows Station?

"These places are part of our history," Anderson said. "Only as generations pass do they disappear from the heart."

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Information from: The Janesville Gazette, http://www.gazetteextra.com