Chapter 5: Millionaire Murdered
His Toll Gate Burned to Ground by 'Indians'
In the preceding chapters much has been said about the impassable roads through the good rich Illinois mud. Such roads prolonged isolation for our township. Moreover, they gave the farmers great disadvantage in competition with those from other areas. The difficulties of transportation increased cost of production, and the Niles farmer took the loss.
All the diagonal roads now leading to the city were originally Indian trails. Those from this direction are now Lincoln, Elston and Milwaukee Avenues. Milwaukee Avenue was the trail to Green Bay; Lincoln Avenue, turning west as it still does, went through the present Morton Grove and off toward the western part of the state. As traffic increased over Milwaukee Avenue the ruts deepened, until at last a company was organized, headed by a Mr. Mitchell, to surface it with three-inch planks.
The planking of Lincoln Avenue from Niles Center (Skokie) to the city limits, then at Division, was done by Henry Harms, who was able to finance it himself for he had become a large landholder. He set up toll gates to recover the cost of the undertaking, and was the first keeper of one such gate. It was at the bend of Lincoln Avenue at Lincoln School.
It was simple: only a log pivoting on a pole and the short end weighted.
One of our townspeople (Miss Alma Klehm), who was a little girl at the time, tells how the children liked to go there to open the gate for the teamsters when they had paid their toll. To do it they put their weight on the short end, lifting the log to swing it out of the way. This makes a pretty interlude for the drab story to follow.
How far Mr. Mitchell's improvement on Milwaukee Avenue reached is uncertain. A Mr. Gould soon planked it from Niles to Chicago. He established toll gates on it at Elston, Irving Park and Western.
Opportunity Knocks
At this point Amos J. Snell enters the scene in Niles Township and in the villages of Irving Park and Lake View to the south.
When the two railroads, Northwestern and St. Paul, pushed northward from the city, and their woodburning locomotives created a demand for timber, Snell saw opportunity knocking at his door.
While the farmers of the region, to repeat the apt phrase from the old German newspaper, "fell upon the axhandle" Snell fell upon the timberlands, buying them up until he had a timber kingdom. He hired others to do the clearing: Johann Tess was one who chopped for him.
Snell set up a lumberyard on the North Side, and as his wealth piled up he gradually came to possess most of the land between Addison and Irving Park Road from the main line of the St. Paul Railroad to Narragansett, a tract half a mile north and south and more than two miles east and west, a total of more than a square mile.
He divided it into small farms, built frame houses on them and rented them. (As late as 1950 it was reported that some of the houses were still standing.) Snell was well on the way to being a millionaire.
If the valuable forests were viewed by Snell through the dollar sign, so also were the deplorable muddy roads.
He bought the Northwest Plank Road (Milwaukee Avenue) from Mr. Gould from Division (Chicago limits) to the Des Plaines River. Though it had seemed at first that planking was the happy solution to the road problem, it proved shortlived. With no roadbed, soaking in the deep ooze, the cracks spread, the mud rose, the planks warped, and the ends curled up like rockers.
Snell rebuilt the road with a hard gravel surface and extended it to Wheeling, establishing another gate at Welcome Park. Besides the four gates already mentioned, he set up others on Milwaukee Avenue at Leland, Jefferson, Belmont, and Fullerton. There also was one at Elston and Division which possibly was his, preventing a detour on Elston to avoid the toll. There were others not owned by him, namely those on Lincoln Avenue and a notable one on Clark at Rogers Avenue, where the gatekeeper's house was still standing in 1902.
System Was Legitimate
Now, lest there be any misunderstanding, these gates and the whole toll system was legitimate and fair. The County Board licenses private concerns to build and operate toll roads and to collect fees as a means of defraying the cost and maintenance.
It was a method of obtaining passable roads by use of private capital instead of taxation. In some places in our country a road tax was imposed, but a man might "work it out" on the road if he chose. In the toll system it was paid by the user.
The system was considered just and brought no complaint up to a point. The point was reached when the revenue exceeded that justified by the investment.
By the 1880s, on a normally lively day, a gate might bring in as much as $400. The gate at Milwaukee and Fullerton took in $710 on a Sunday when the new cemeteries had been opened northwest of the city and some Polish and Bohemian organizations happened to be holding a picnic at Niles.
One night in 1888 Snell was murdered in his home. Clues were few, and suspicions were many. It had appearances of being an inside job. A nephew, Willie Tascott, became the prime object of search. Detective work spread through the nation, and trails were picked up in Europe. The case dragged on and all leads faded out. Neither Tascott nor other suspects ever were caught. The murder remains a mystery.
For several years the Snell heirs kept their hands on the gate business. The traffic grew and also the profits, and indignation rose among the farmers, especially of the Polish and Bohemian communities.
Indian Uprising
On April 28, 1890 protest was made to the County Board. A few nights later the farmers took action themselves. Disguised as Indians, they made a surprise attack on the gate at Milwaukee and Fullerton and burned it and the keeper's house. The Chicago Tribune of May 3, 1890 gives these details:
A crowd of 200 men made a descent on the Milwaukee institution. Shortly after midnight they aroused the guard by a heavy knocking on his door. After putting him to flight they burned his house and the gate to the ground. As the flames rose the Indians danced and whooped in glee. By the time the firemen from the nearest engine house had arrived, the little building was nearly consumed. A police patrol came, but the mob did not budge.
The police looked on and made no effort to do anything. They, as well as the general public, were on the side of the arsonists. The Tribune reported some of the remarks among the crowd. When asked by the police how the fire had started, one man said, "I guess Snell's heirs burned it." Another said, "Perhaps it started from spontaneous combustion." But a third amended that answer by "From spontaneous indignation!"
Some said the deed had actually been incited by the County Board when the protest was made to them a few days before. At any rate, no action was ever taken.
Conflicting stories have come down to us, as is to be expected of incidents so long past. One is that the mob went on that night and tore down other gates but did not set fire to them. But the record seems to be that the county soon bought the Milwaukee Avenue toll rights from the Snell heirs, and the Lincoln Avenue rights from Henry Harms, and then abolished the whole system. One gate was still left on the Milwaukee Road as late as 1892.
Another mistaken story, still in historical society records, is that the burning was done by real Indians whose wrath had been smoldering over infringement on their rights. But police reports do not bear this out, and they could surely have distinguished between real Indians and artificial ones, even by firelight. Besides, few Indians were left in the vicinity in 1890, and those who were would hardly have picked the toll gates as the object of their vengeance, since only vehicles, not pedestrians, were taxed. The long story of the sticky roads had finally come to a dramatic conclusion.
- Originally published in The Villager, Thursday, June 12, 1958, pp. 16-17
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