Railroads
Along with the depot, Kimball also built tracks along Alabama street that resulted in the warehouse district moving to that location. He widened Pryor Street and constructed Wall Street. Capitalists came from New York, Boston, and beyond to invest in the area leading to $100,000 in profit for Kimball.
Kimball was also active in railroad construction throughout Georgia and the South. He was at one point president of 9 different railroad companies. And by 1871, he had constructed some 300 miles (480 km) of track. Kimball lost most of his railroad interests shortly after the Great Chicago Fire in 1871.
Read more about this topic: Hannibal Kimball
Famous quotes containing the word railroads:
“We noticed several other sandy tracts in our voyage; and the course of the Merrimack can be traced from the nearest mountain by its yellow sand-banks, though the river itself is for the most part invisible. Lawsuits, as we hear, have in some cases grown out of these causes. Railroads have been made through certain irritable districts, breaking their sod, and so have set the sand to blowing, till it has converted fertile farms into deserts, and the company has had to pay the damages.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Indeed, I believe that in the future, when we shall have seized again, as we will seize if we are true to ourselves, our own fair part of commerce upon the sea, and when we shall have again our appropriate share of South American trade, that these railroads from St. Louis, touching deep harbors on the gulf, and communicating there with lines of steamships, shall touch the ports of South America and bring their tribute to you.”
—Benjamin Harrison (1833–1901)
“Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)