Former CB&Q Passenger Train Station in Oregon IL
Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad Depot, Oregon Illinois

The Chicago, Burlington, & Quincy Railroad Depot played a long role as Oregon's rail-related transportation hub. Beginning with its construction in 1913, the depot was, for decades, the single most important transportation-related structure in the city, serving as a point of entry and departure for tourists, soldiers, politicians, and many other groups of people (not to mention freight, as well) between Oregon and the rest of the world. The brick and stone structure, structurally sound and entirely intact, ties the city to its past with simple elegance and understated beauty.
Oregon, Illinois, the Ogle County seat, is located approximately 25 miles south of Rockford, Illinois. Traversed by the Rock River, Oregon is currently home to almost 4,500 people. Founded in 1836, Oregon City, as it was originally known, had a population of 225 people. In 1843, the city changed its name to Oregon, and by 1870, it had grown to over 1,000 inhabitants. By 1920, the city's population rose to 2,227. As the city grew, so grew the demand for transportation to the large urban centers to the east and contact with settlements to the west.
On April 18th, 1871, the first passenger train coming to Oregon arrived on the east side of the Rock River. In October of 1871, Oregon's first railroad bridge crossed the Rock River. It was a covered bridge. Oregon's first depot was a wood frame structure built in 1872. It was consumed by fire in 1910 and no remnants from that building remain today. The present depot was built by the Chicago, Burlington, & Quincy Railroad (C B & Q) in 1913.
Passenger trains were very important to Oregon's early development. As early as 1890, the "Burlington Route" promoted the City of Oregon as a resort town with qualities comparable to those of nationally-known travel destinations in Colorado, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Around 1890, the Chicago, Burlington, & Quincy and Chicago & Iowa Railroads produced a 33-page travel booklet extolling the virtues of Oregon, Illinois. The booklet makes light of the fact that this place "with good and ample hostelries, numbers of springs gushing forth pure, health-giving water, a beautiful river, towering hills, massive rocks and rolling prairie" was less than four hours from Chicago. The railroad circulated this and other booklets to potential tourists in St. Louis, Peoria, and other locations as well. In its booklets, the Burlington Route offered directions to Oregon from points other than Chicago. The Burlington Route states in its Oregon booklet, "We are firmly convinced that we can offer the public a resort capable of fulfilling their desire to the utmost extent, and recommend to their consideration, therefore, Oregon, Illinois; and we only ask that it be favored with a trial visit, feeling sure that we shall ever afterward be supported in our opinions."
After arriving on the train, visitors frequently stayed at the Sinnissippi House, a hotel with 40 rooms. Others chose to stay at the American House, a hotel with 15 rooms. Neither the Sinnissippi nor the American stand today. In addition to these hotels, tourists had many private houses from which to choose, Rooms available at these private boarding houses varied from as few as three to as many as twelve.
Two C B & Q Chicago-based trains arrived at and departed from Oregon daily. Three ticket agents were available twenty-four hours a day to handle the passenger use of the trains traveling east to Chicago in the morning and west to Oregon at night. In 1934-1936, Burlington introduced the Zephyr; a new, streamlined, transcontinental passenger train. These trains also passed through Oregon, in addition to the regular train traffic. It took passengers only one hour and twenty-six minutes to go from Chicago to Oregon aboard the Zephyr. The Pioneer Zephyr, in fact, made a demonstration run from Denver to Chicago at an average speed of 77.6 miles per hour.
Some of the more famous visitors passing through the depot included: Frank O. Lowden, Governor of Illinois and Presidential contender; Lorado Taft, famous sculptor; Carter Harrison, Mayor of Chicago; Albert A. Michelson, Nobel Prize winner; Dr. James Henry Breasted, famous archaeologist; W. Somerset Maugham, author; Ella Peattie, first female reporter for the Chicago Tribune; and Donald Culross Peattie, American naturalist and author.
Tourists and visitors to the area relied on the railroad to bring them to Oregon. The Eagles Nest Colony, a summer artist camp, owned by sculptor Lorado Taft on the east side of the Rock River, brought many Chicago artists, business leaders, and visitors to Oregon. In 1911, Taft erected and dedicated his concrete statue, "American Indian" on the east banks of the Rock River, which became a popular attraction. In 1927, White Pines State Park was established west of town.
A few politicians and business leaders had summer homes in the Oregon area including Medill McCormick, Governor Frank Lowden's Sinnissippi Farms, and Stronghold, the summer home of Chicago Daily News owner and publisher, Walter A. Strong. Visitors would often take the railroad from Chicago to Oregon to meet with the McCormicks, Lowdens, and Strongs.
The Chicago, Burlington, & Quincy Depot functioned as more than just a stop for tourists. The depot served as a place at which to find current information. The depot housed the telegraph, a key source of important national and international news. Citizens commonly waited at the depot to learn about national election results. Oregon's depot was also the place where soldiers began their long journeys, going off to both World Wars and returning to Oregon at war's end. Soldiers leaving Oregon would travel on to larger metropolitan areas for military processing. Soldiers and military supplies would also pass through Oregon during the wars on the railroad.
The railroad also brought industry to Oregon. As a result of the railroad's entry into Oregon, an oatmeal mill, a furniture factory, and a flour mill sprang up in Oregon. These businesses did not last long, but other businesses did manage to survive with the help of the railroad. The Paragon Foundry, for example, was a business that struggled early in its history. It improved its distribution of goods with the help of the railroad, however, becoming quite profitable during World War I. This Oregon foundry stayed in business until the 1960's.
In 1895, the City of Oregon witnessed the beginning of the E. D. Etnyre Company. E. D. Etnyre also benefited from the railroad. Etnyre was originally dedicated to the manufacturing of automatic hog watering machines. By 1900, the company began to manufacture a thresher tank to supply water and fuel for steam-operated threshing machines, as well as water sprinklers for dusty streets and roads. In the early 1910's, the Etnyre Company attempted to develop a motor car business. This, however, was not successful, the company having produced only about a dozen touring cars. The company went on to develop and distribute oil sprinklers, asphalt distributors, and street flushers.
By the 1920's, the asphalt distributor was Etnyre's primary product. The company earned the Army and Navy "E" award in 1944 for its manufacturing performance during World War II.
Other businesses with close ties to railroad transportation in Oregon were those of local piano makers. Rice-Macey Company was the first piano maker in Oregon. Frederick G. Jones began constructing pianos and took over the Rice-Macey factory. Jones expanded its facilities and became the Schiller Piano Company, producing and shipping 5,000 pianos annually. Eventually, the Schiller Piano Company merged with the Cable Company, and the piano manufacturer became known as Schiller-Cable. Schiller-Cable became the Connover-Cable Company, and that business, in turn, became part of the Aeolian Corporation, a well-known manufacturer of pianos and organs.
The Carnation Company milk condensing plant opened for business in Oregon in 1911. The company made evaporated milk, much of which was shipped on the C. B. & Q. Railroad. The National Silica Company also was headquartered in Oregon. The company shipped sand and flint. A railroad spur was built to the company in 1909. During World War I, 20 to 25 railroad cars of sand and flint were shipped daily by the company.
These and other businesses relied heavily on the railroad to ship their goods nationally. Local industry would not have blossomed without rail transportation and the depot. Oregon would not have grown without local industry.
Local shops, farmers, and citizens of Oregon also used the depot for the shipping of packages, receiving manufactured goods, and the shipment of grain and livestock to larger cities, including Chicago.
Building Description
The Chicago, Burlington, & Quincy Railroad Depot is a one-story, passenger railroad station located on the south side of Collins Street, along the southeastern edge of the Oregon, Illinois, city limits in Ogle County. The depot is located in a residential neighborhood near the west bank of the Rock River. The brick and stucco building stands on property covering about 24,750 square feet. The site is currently an inactive portion of an active railway route. Complete with a ceramic tile roof and brick walkway surrounding the building, it is 100 feet long and 34 feet wide at its extreme width. The depot retains its original appearance except for some modernization of mechanical systems, plumbing, doorways, and interior workspaces. No structural changes have been made to the building. Constructed in 1913, the depot served as the city's focal point of passenger railroad transportation to and from Chicago, and west across the Rock River and the greater Rock River Valley.
The railroad depot has a rectangular plan that can best be described as a "barbell" or "I" shape. The building is 100 feet long (running east and west) and 34 feet wide (running north and south) at its extreme width. The center of the depot, the general waiting room, has exterior dimensions of 24 feet wide by 50 feet long. The general waiting room is fully integrated into the structure as a whole. It is simply narrower than the east and west ends of the depot, hence the "I" shape.
The depot's foundation is concrete. The concrete slab foundation supports an exterior of red-colored face brick with an 18-inch gray limestone base, brick corner piers, and red brick on the lower one-third of the exterior walls. All exterior steps are also made of gray limestone, which, judging by the color and other characteristics of the pieces, had not been cut from the same quarry as the pieces used for the base trimming. The upper two-thirds of the exterior walls, up to the roof area, are made of common brick covered by stucco.
On the east and west gabled sections of the depot, courses of red brick form a cornice below the roof line above the stucco. Ceramic tile covers the roof. A stone stringcourse, running under the building's windows, wraps around the building's entire perimeter. The east end and west end of the building each have a distinct gabled roof with vertical false half-timbering, forming a double, cross-gabled roof over the entire structure. The apex of the general waiting room's roof is perpendicular to those of the east and west ends of the building. The roof also provides a closed overhang of approximately 3 feet around the perimeter of the building. The overhang is supported on the north and south sides by pairs of decorative wood eave brackets. These eave brackets are found over the exterior of the general waiting room portion of the building and not on the east and west ends.
The north side of the building has the building's main entrance from Collins Street. The main door, centrally located on the north side of the building, leads directly into the general waiting room. Once a double-door entry, a single, basic wooden door was installed after the depot was closed. A transom rests on the top of this central door. On each side of the central doorway, one finds a grouping of three, four-over-one, double-hung windows abutting one another. These six windows are all on the exterior portion of the depot's general waiting room area. Some of the building's exterior windows have been broken, boarded up, or painted, but none of the windows have been filled in or otherwise eliminated. On the east end is a group of four, three-over-one, double-hung windows. The same group of four windows is also present on the west end. In 1930, the group of four windows on the west end of the building's north side were replaced with four new windows. The old windows were smaller than the replacements. The "new" windows are identical in size to the old windows on the rest of the building. All of the building's exterior and interior doors and windows are lined with a wooden molding. All of the building's external window sill areas are trimmed with gray limestone, matching the limestone trim at the base of the building.
The east side of the building has two pairs of equidistantly placed, non-abutting, three-over-one, double-hung windows. No doors are present on this side of the building.
The south side of the building, with one exception, is identical to the north side of the building. At the points where the building widens on its east and west ends, one finds additional, single windows facing the centrally-located south entryway. These windows afford a view of the tracks to the east and west.
The depot's west side has two doorways and one double-hung window. On the left half of the building's west side is a double door leading to the baggage room. An eight-lite transom is located above the doorway. On the right half is a single door and a three-over-one window. The doorway leads directly into the ticket office. The single window is approximately one foot to the right of the ticket office doorway. Centered on the roof over the west end of the general waiting room area is a masonry chimney. The chimney is constructed with red-colored face brick and stucco trim matching the depot's exterior walls. The top of the chimney is not intact. Many of the chimney bricks have fallen away, leaving behind a jagged chimney top.
The depot's interior has wire lathe with plaster on the interior walls and ceilings. In addition, the general waiting room has beamed ceilings. The floors are covered with one-foot marble squares. A twelve-inch, synthetic marble base runs throughout the building. Additionally, the lower one-third of the interior walls are covered by an off-white ceramic tile wainscoting. Each tile measures 4 inches high by 12 inches long by ½ inch thick. Interior changes in the general waiting room include wood and drywall partitions used to create three office spaces. These partitions are not permanent fixtures and can be removed easily. The ceiling height is about 15 feet throughout the majority of the building. Fluorescent ceiling light fixtures run throughout the building, replacing the depot's original electrical light fixtures.
Standing in the main waiting room area facing south, one finds the ticket office and ticket window in the southwest corner (to the right), the baggage room entrance in the northwest corner (to the right), the door leading to the women's rest room facilities in the northeast corner (to the left), and entrance to the men's rest room/smoking room in the southeast corner (to the left). One is unable to gain entry into the ticket office from the general waiting area. In order to enter the ticket office, one must first go through the baggage room and enter through a door on the south wall of the baggage room. The women's toilet facilities are in the southeast corner of the restroom, while the men's toilet is in the northeast corner of the restroom. As a result, the toilet facilities are side-by-side, separated by a wall.
The baggage room is somewhat different from the rest of the building in that it has a concrete floor, a narrow tongue-and-groove wood sheathing for the ceiling, and lacks a wainscot. In addition, it lacks any ornamental base trim. The baggage room also has a single entry into the building's boiler room in the basement. This is the only entryway into the basement. The boiler is about 20 years old and in excellent working order.
Outside, the building is surrounded by a red-colored brick walkway set in a herringbone pattern. The walkway rests on a 6-inch cinder base and the bricks are not mortared. The walkway has become uneven in many places.
The original freight depot stood to the west of the passenger depot. This structure is no longer standing and no other rail-related buildings remain in Oregon. A single track to the south of the depot, used for boarding passengers, has been partially removed. Additionally, a single track that ran to the north of the depot has also been removed. The only tracks that remain entirely intact are four sets to the south of the structure that are still used by the Burlington Northern Railroad.
The building is easily visible from the overpass of Illinois Highway 2 to the west and is distinctive at its location on Collins Street. It is accessible directly from Collins Street and has a large open dirt area that is used for parking and train watching. The depot is isolated from all other buildings in the area.

Floor Plan

East elevation (1994)

South elevation (1994)

South elevation (1994)

North elevation (1994)

North elevation (1994)

Waiting room entry (1994)

Entry (1994)

Ticket window from waiting room (1994)

Waiting room looking to women's restroom (1994)

Waiting room ceiling (1994)
