•July 25, 2018•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

This column is one of several about colorful but little-known characters from Illinois history, written in tribute to our 2018 bicentennial this year.
Charles Tyson Yerkes and George E. Cole were larger-than-life figures who squared off in the Gilded Age of the 1890s, when Chicago politics made today’s game look like tiddlywinks.
In 1886, fresh out of jail in Philadelphia for financial improprieties, Yerkes exchanged a loyal wife and six children for a stunning beauty. The twosome headed for Chicago, the fastest growing city in the world, to make his fortune, which he did, many times over.
Yerkes built or bought 48 street car lines to get Chicagoans around, and became worth a reported $29 million, when that was more than real money. In business, he was tough as nails, and brilliant.
For example, the great retail merchant Marshall Field and fellow investors completed a street car line in Evanston, immediately north of Chicago. They figured it made sense to hook up to Yerkes’ line where the two cities met. But Yerkes said No, leaving Field three blocks short of a good investment.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.