Maps 11-3, 11-4, and 11-5.

These maps and the next two are individual pages from a remarkable collection of maps of the Illinois Traction System in the John S. Huber collection.  They are not explicitly dated, but appear to be from the late 1920s.  The trackage of the Kankakee & Urbana Traction appears to be absent, which suggests a date of at least 1927 or 1928.

The central map of these three shows the interurban trackage (but not all of the city streetcar trackage) from just west of Neil Street to East Main Street in Urbana.  The east-west track in the middle of this map shows the entire private right-of-way between Third Street in Champaign on the west and Main Street in Urbana on the east.  The footprints of several key University of Illinois buildings are shown near the middle of this map.  We can also see the sites of the Urbana Power Plant and the Champaign Depot.  The original Urbana Depot is seen in ghostly form where it has been erased, with an arrow pointing to the new Urbana Depot in the Flatiron Building.  The maps do not seem to be drawn to scale.  The sidings near the new Urbana Depot and those in the University area near Wright and Goodwin Streets seem to be next to one another, although they were about a mile apart.  Also, the curve of East Main Street in Urbana seems to be exaggerated.

The map at the top shows the interurban tracks around the western border of Champaign.  We can see the Illinois Central branch line cutting across the upper left corner of this map, with sidings and crossovers connecting to the interurban tracks.  Modern Duncan Road crosses these tracks north-south immediately west of the curve in the IC tracks; that curve still crosses Springfield Avenue in west Champaign today.  Going west to east, the ITS track makes two great swoops until on the east edge of this map, it comes into alignment with West John Street, via which it enters Champaign.  When this area was being excavated for development in the [1980s?], the author retrieved a rather ordinary track spike, presumably discarded when these tracks were removed.

The map at the bottom shows East Main Street in Urbana from the Wabash crossing and connection at the left, east almost to Mayview.  Again, there does not seem to be any scale to the map.  The mild S-curve near the words “1.0 Mile to Urbana” appears to represent the point at which the tracks (looking west to east) leave the center of East Main Street and swing to the side of the road.  The “Poor Farm Siding” was located near where the Champaign County Nursing Home is today.  These details can be seen to scale on the Fehl map, Map 11-2, above. — Collection of John S. Huber, copyright 2011 Larry Miller Jr. and Larry Miller III

084-Champaign-West

085-Champaign_Urbana

087-Urbana-East

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