Middleport Township
Middleport sits in between Iroquois and Concord.
Today Middleport Township is not only a thriving agricultural region but a community proud of its industry and the variety of businesses offered its citizens.
This township includes a clothing store, operated continuously since 1892; a funeral home with its beginnings in 1897; an elevator in continuous use since 1909; and an auto parts business dating from 1926. Joe Fanyo became the first auto dealer in Watseka in 1911, receiving five Ford cars to sell. He used his father's barn to store the cars.
The coming of the automobile led to oil, gravel, crushed rock, and concrete pavement. Since the automobile, the community is fast becoming a society "on the move," and from 1921 until today the roads of Middleport Township have constantly been improved.
The first concrete or paved road crossed Middleport in 1915 when a narrow road was built west of Watseka. The State of Illinois embarked on a program of building concrete highways in 1920 and in that same year Illinois STate Route 1 was paved. The following year Route 24 was paved and where there had once been mud roads, dry and dusty roads, or frozen ruts, Middleport Township could boast of good roads. In 1930 a corporation specializing in asphalt paving began in Watseka and continues to date.
The turn of the centruy found Watseka with fifty or more business houses, four hotels and several boarding houses, two banks, two grade schools, two newspapers, fie doctors, and four dentists. At that time the township had a population of 2,955 with Watseka accounting for 2,148.
Today, Watseka, witha population of 5600 people (4505 in Middleport Township, the largest population of twenty-six townships in the county), can boast of over 200 businesses, three motels and one hotel, eighteen local restaurants, two banks and six financial institutions, two grade schools, a newspaper and radio station, twenty-seven doctors, and four dentists.
Much of the success of this township can be attributed to its accessibility through highways and railroads. The C&E.I Railroad (now the Seaboard and Missouri Pacific) crosses the township north and south. Crossing the township east and west is the Sante Fe Railroad.
Before the building of railroads in Iroquois County the farmers had a difficult time marketing their livestock and grain, which had to be taken to Lafayette or Chicago.
The principal industry of Middleport Township in 1900 was farming and remains so even today. The whole farming system was revolutionized when mechanized machinery came on the scene making it possible for one person to do the work of many and farm more acres than in the past. The trend of larger farms continues to the present date.
From horse drawn single row plows and cultivators to "shucking" corn by hand, farming evolved into newer methods of cultivating and harvesting crops. The threshing machine, the bailing machines, tractors, large plows, large cultivators, combines and corn pickers, all became a new way of farm life.