By Mark Rhoads –
Many years ago I created an Illinois Hall of Fame for both this website and the website of the Illinois State Society of Washington, DC. William Cornelius Van Horne is an example of someone who was famous in his own time but who is mostly forgotten now.
Van Horne was born in what is now called Frankfort, Illinois on Feb. 3, 1843 and he grew up in Joliet where he became the first mayor of the city. But the fame of Van Horne came from his career as a rail road builder. He worked in his early years for the Illinois Central Railroad and other rail lines in the U.S.
But his greatest accomplishment came in 1888 when he became president of the Canadian Pacific Railway and supervised the completion of the southern transcontinental route through very challenging mountain ranges in western Canada. The irony is that the government of Canada was afraid of competition in their own country from U.S. rail builders but then they turned to an Illinoisan to complete their first nationwide rail tracks.
Van Horne died in Montreal in 1915, where he was revered.
