Octave Chanute's unique career

Many Fairbury citizens are familiar with the large Chanute Air Force Base in Rantoul, Illinois. This former base was named after Octave Chanute (1832-1910). Mr. Chanute also played a key role in the founding of Fairbury in 1857.

Octave Chanute was born in Paris, France, in 1832. His parents were Joseph and Elise Chanut. His father was a professor at the Collège de France. The family emigrated to the United States of America in 1838, when Joseph Chanut was named vice president of Jefferson College in Louisiana.

Octave Chanute moved to New York City. From 1846 until 1848, he attended the Coudert Lyceum in New York. This private school was roughly equivalent to a college-preparatory high school. Octave graduated from the Lyceum in 1848.

In the 1840s, few colleges offered degrees in Civil Engineering. The railroad revolution in the United States was in full swing, and many new engineers were needed. Octave Chanute chose what many young men of his era did: join a railroad and learn civil engineering through practical work.

In 1848, Octave Chanute joined the Hudson River Railroad as a trainee/surveyor and began learning civil engineering through practical work. He had no college expenses because he was a paid employee. Sixteen-year-old Octave Chanute quickly learned the key skills needed to design and build railroads, including surveying, route location, drafting, earthwork, bridge construction, and railroad operations. In retrospect, Octave Chanute belonged to the last great generation of American engineers who rose to the very top almost entirely through apprenticeship and self-education.

At the Hudson River Railroad, Octave Chanute did not remain a low-level surveyor for long. He was steadily promoted during his four years on the Hudson River Railroad. By the time he left in 1853, he had become Division Engineer at Albany, responsible for completing terminal facilities and maintaining track between Hudson and Albany. That's a remarkable amount of responsibility for someone only about 21 years old.

In 1853, Octave Chanute's boss at the Hudson River Railroad, H. A. Gardner, became chief engineer of the Chicago & Mississippi Railroad and brought Chanute west to Illinois. Chanute helped build the line between Joliet and Bloomington (which later became part of the Chicago & Alton Railroad). Although he was only 21, his former chief engineer trusted him enough to recruit him for a major western railroad project.

Around 1854, the Peoria & Oquawka Railroad hired 22-year-old Octave Chanute. He quickly became Chief Engineer of the eastern division of the Peoria & Oquawka Railroad as early as 1854. Octave Chanute then supervised construction of the railroad line from Peoria to the Indiana border, about 112 miles. Construction passed through what is now Fairbury in 1857.

Several farmers wanted the new railroad to go through their farmland. Relatively cheap farmland could be instantly converted into city building lots if a new railroad town was founded. The farmer who owned the land could make a lot of money by converting his farmland into city lots.

Caleb Patton (1816-1894) won the competition to have the new railroad built through his farm. He won by offering Octave Chanute one-half of the city building lots if he chose to run the railroad through his farm. Octave Chanute wisely accepted this offer on behalf of the Peoria & Oquawka Railroad (now the TP&W Railroad).

1857 was a major year in Octave Chanute's life. In addition to supervising the new Peoria & Oquawka Railroad line extension, he married Anne Riddell James. She was a Peoria native and had family in the area. Octave and Anne Chanute had a son and three daughters.

After Octave Chanute successfully completed the new Peoria & Oquawka Railroad, he continued to have a great career as a civil engineer. He designed and constructed the two biggest stockyards in the United States. These were the Chicago Stock Yards (1865) and Kansas City Stockyards (1871). Octave Chanute also became a nationally known bridge builder. He designed and built at least seven major bridges in the Midwest.

While working in the railroad industry, Chanute established a procedure for pressure-treating wooden railroad ties with an antiseptic that increased the wood's lifespan. Chanute established factories to treat these wooden ties. He convinced railroad owners that spending money to treat ties to extend their service life would reduce replacement costs. To monitor the longevity of railroad ties and other wooden items, he introduced the railroad date nail in the United States. By putting a date on the head of the nail, the railroads could instantly tell the age of their wooden ties.

In 1883, Chanute was 51 years old. He had already achieved what most engineers could only dream about. He had helped build hundreds of miles of railroad, designed major bridges, constructed the nation's largest stockyards, and developed new methods for preserving railroad ties.

Financially secure, Chanute retired from the Erie Railway and became an independent engineering consultant. Most men would have considered their life's work complete. For Octave Chanute, however, a remarkable second career was beginning.

Octave Chanute first became interested in aviation after watching a balloon ascend in Peoria, Illinois, in 1856. When he retired from his railroad career in 1883, he devoted some leisure time to furthering the new science of aviation. Drawing on his engineering background, Chanute collected all available data from flight experimenters worldwide and combined it with the knowledge he had gained as a civil engineer. He published his findings in a series of articles in The Railroad and Engineering Journal from 1891 to 1893, which were then republished in the influential book Progress in Flying Machines in 1894. This was the most systematic global survey of fixed-wing heavier-than-air aviation research published up to that time.

Octave Chanute corresponded and worked with many of the pioneers in the new field of aviation. He also developed some new concepts for stacked wings. Chanute publicly shared all of his designs and research results.

In 1899, Wilbur Wright read Octave Chanute's book Progress in Flying Machines. Wilbur contacted Chanute in May 1900. Chanute helped to publicize the Wright brothers' work and provided input and consistent encouragement, visiting their camp near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1901, 1902, and 1903. The Wrights and Chanute exchanged hundreds of letters between 1900 and 1910.

On December 17, 1903, at Kill Devil Hills, near Kitty Hawk, the Wright brothers made the first controlled, sustained, powered flight of a heavier-than-air aircraft.

By 1910, Octave Chanute was recognized worldwide as one of aviation's founding pioneers. That year, the Royal Aeronautical Society awarded him its prestigious Gold Medal for his distinguished service to aeronautical science. It was only the second Gold Medal the Society had ever presented, following the Wright brothers the previous year.

After he died in 1910, Chanute's legacy continued to grow. In 1917, the U.S. Army named its new aviation training field at Rantoul, Illinois, Chanute Field in his honor. The base later became Chanute Air Force Base, ensuring that generations of American airmen would know the name of the French-born engineer whose career helped bridge the railroad age and the dawn of aviation.

Octave Chanute enjoyed an extraordinary 35-year career as a civil engineer before becoming one of the pioneers of aviation. Few people have achieved national prominence in two completely different fields during a single lifetime.

Dale Maley's weekly history feature on Fairbury News is sponsored by Dr. Charlene Aaron.