In 1836 Gale publicized a subscription- and land purchase-based plan to found manual labor colleges in the Mississippi River valley.

[6] Land was purchased for this purpose in Knox County and in 1837 the first subscribers to the college-founding plan arrived and began to settle what would become Galesburg.

[7] Galesburg, populated from the first by abolitionists, was home to one of the first anti-slavery societies in Illinois and was a stop on the Underground Railroad.

Galesburg also was the home of Mary Ann "Mother" Bickerdyke, who provided hospital care for Union soldiers during the Civil War.

In later years, Galesburg became the birthplace of poet Carl Sandburg, artist Dorothea Tanning, and former Major League Baseball star Jim Sundberg.

It includes the cottage he was born in, a modern museum, the rock under which he and his wife Lilian are buried, and a performance venue.

The CB&Q also built a major depot on South Seminary Street that was controversially torn down and replaced by a much smaller station in 1983.

In the late 19th century, when the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway connected its service through to Chicago, it also laid track through Galesburg and built its own railroad depot.

A series of mergers eventually united both lines under the ownership of BNSF Railway, carrying an average of seven freight trains per hour between them.

Galesburg was home to the pioneering brass era automobile company Western, which produced the Gale, named for the town.

[citation needed] Baseball Hall of Fame members Grover Cleveland Alexander (1909) and Sam Rice (1912) played for Galesburg.

Rice had to leave the Galesburg team in 1912, when his wife, two children, his parents and two sisters were killed in a tornado.

The Carr Mansion at 560 North Prairie Street was the site of a presidential cabinet meeting held in 1899 by U.S. President William McKinley and U.S. Secretary of State John Hay.

In 2003 the city worked with local groups to revamp the festival and the Galesburg Railroad Museum resumed bus tours of the yards.

In 2010, the Galesburg Railroad Museum started offering a VIP tour of the yards, in which a select group of riders are allowed in the Hump Towers and Diesel Shop and see the BNSF at work.

[23] Also in September are the Great Cardboard Boat Regatta and the Annual Rubber Duck Race, at Lake Storey.

[26] BNSF provides rail freight to Galesburg and operates a large hump yard 1.9 miles (3.1 km)[27] south of town.

[28] Galesburg is served by Interstate 74, which runs north to Moline in the Quad Cities region, and southeast to Peoria and beyond.

[29] Galesburg has several radio stations and newspapers delivering a mix of local, regional and national news.

A daily, it is the main newspaper of the city, and was owned by Copley Press until it was sold to Gate House Media in April 2007.