Significance
The three bridges are the only ones of their type still extant in Lee County, Illinois. They are also significant for their association with the Illinois Central Railroad and its beginnings. With the arrival of the Illinois Central Railroad to Dixon, business and industry followed allowing Dixon to grow and prosper. The increase in population in the Dixon area over many years was a direct result of the arrival of the ICRR. There was an attempt by the city government to tear down the arches but the local citizens protested and the bridges were saved. The three bridges were listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places, as part of the same listing, on December 2, 1987.
Read more about this topic: Illinois Central Stone Arch Railroad Bridges
Famous quotes containing the word significance:
“The hysterical find too much significance in things. The depressed find too little.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“The hypothesis I wish to advance is that ... the language of morality is in ... grave disorder.... What we possess, if this is true, are the fragments of a conceptual scheme, parts of which now lack those contexts from which their significance derived. We possess indeed simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have—very largely if not entirely—lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.”
—Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (b. 1929)