NEWS ARTICLES

Of
PIKE COUNTY ILLINOIS



ROUTE 36 - Brings New Life to Pittsfield

From The Decatur Review 26 December 1925

Pittsfield is awaking from a long slumber, says John A. Beckett of Decatur. It was the paved road which aroused it from somnolence of half a century and it is the young men of the town that are stirring with new civic life. The town is the county seat of Pike county which lies between the Mississippi river and the Illinois river. It is a place of between two and three thousand people. It is seven miles off the main line of the Wabash railroad.

FOUGHT RAILROADS

It is a story told, in Pittsfield, that when the Wabash was built the people fought it away from the town on the theory that it would take all the trade somewhere else. Pittsfield dldn't want a railroad. Later it was found that the town did need a railroad, indeed had to have a railroad. The county built a seven mile railroad extending from Pittsfield north to the Wabash. It was leased to the Wabash railroad and ever since it has been operated as the Pittsfield branch. The Wabash now operates one train a day over it. It formerly had more trains but the automobile has been hard on branch line railroads. When the Wabash isn't using it with its daily train the citizens run scooters over it, a scooter being a cross between a flivver and a Jona Borden bus.

HARD ROAD CAME

Then came the state bond issue roads, Route 36, extending from Jacksonville to Quincy but missing Pittsfield by some distance. Still Pittsfield didn't stir. A county official went to a farmer living near Pittsfieid and said: If you can get me the right of way I can have Route 36 brought through Pittsfield.

“How much time can I have," asked the farmer.
“Oh, you may have a week”
"I'll get it ” said the farmer.

DONATED RIGHT OF WAY

By 10 o'clock that night the farmer brought to the road official the relinquishments of all the right of way needed and all of it donated. The road has been built through Pittsfield but it has not yet been extended to Quincy.

Route 36, by the way, is the only square foot of pavement in Pittsfield. But it will not be all very long. A big street paving program is underway. A new water system is being put in and the mains have been laid in the streets that are to be paved. The grading is being done. By this time next year Pittsfield will be one of the best paved towns in Illinois. It has had enough of its splendid isolation. It has shed its conservatism.