The Onion Belt

The Onion Belt, more formally known as the Chicago & Wabash Valley Railroad (C&WV), was a private railroad in Lake County and Jasper County owned and built by Benjamin J. Gifford for transporting crops, including the onions for which it is informally named, and livestock from his 34,000 acres (14,000 ha) farmholdings in north-western Indiana.

[5] In the first five years of dredging with a steam dredge he dug 75 miles (121 km) of main line ditches, ranging from 6 to 12 feet (1.8 to 3.7 m) deep and 15 to 20 feet (4.6 to 6.1 m) wide, crossed by several hundred miles more of tile drains; and he had 250 tenants producing over 1,000,000 bushels of corn and 400,000 bushels of onions in 1898.

[4] The C&WV began on 1898-08-10 and connected to the "Old Coal Road" (the Chicago, Attica and Southern Railroad) at Zadoc.

[1] This grew by 1900 to track going from Kersey, 3.5 miles (5.6 km) north of Zadoc, to Pleasant Grove, and then by 1901 further south to connect with the Monon Railroad at McCoysburg.

[1] Although it had 100 wells in 1900, the oil drilling had dried up by 1904; the refinery closing that September, a mere 1 year after the branch line had been completed.