1865 The Great Union Stock Yards of Chicago

This black-and-white facsimile reproduces The Great Union Stock Yards of Chicago: Their Railroad Connections, Bank and Exchange, The Hough House, The Water Supply, and General Features. Also, A Sketch of the Live Stock Trade and the Old Yards, by Jack Wing, originally published in Chicago in 1865 by the Religio-Philosophical Publishing Association. The book appeared the same year the Union Stock Yards opened on Christmas Day 1865 — a 320-acre consolidation of nine separate stockyards into a single vast facility on the South Side of Chicago, financed by a consortium of nine railroads and the Chicago Pork Packers' Association at a cost of more than one million dollars. Within decades the Yards would become the largest livestock market in the world, the slaughtering and meatpacking center of the nation, and a defining symbol of Gilded Age industrial capitalism — the place that earned Chicago Carl Sandburg's famous title, "Hog Butcher for the World." This contemporary account captures the Yards at their inception, written by an observer with direct access to the principals and the operation as it opened.

Summary of Contents

The book describes the physical plant and operations of the newly opened Union Stock Yards in detail, including the layout of pens and chutes, the nine railroad connections that fed cattle, hogs, and sheep into the facility from across the Midwest, the Bank and Exchange building that served as the commercial nerve center of the trade, and the Hough House — the elegant hotel built on the grounds to accommodate cattle drovers, buyers, and visiting dignitaries. Wing also documents the engineering of the water supply system required to service such a massive operation, alongside the general features of the grounds and buildings.

A concluding sketch traces the history of the live stock trade in Chicago and the operation of the older, scattered yards that the Union Stock Yards consolidated and replaced, providing context for the scale and ambition of the new enterprise. An essential primary source for historians of nineteenth-century American agriculture and industry, the Chicago meatpacking trade, railroad commerce, and the urban development of post–Civil War Chicago.

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