THE PROVISO YARDS. In the early 1950’s, my father would often comment when we drove near the enormous railroad yards near Chicago known as the Proviso Yards that this would be one of the major military targets if the United States was ever in a war. He had explained that this was the connecting point where trains from the western part of the country met trains from the eastern part.
Thinking how times have changed, I take note that this was a time that it was taken for granted that it would be railroads that would move goods and troops. I also, growing up in the era of the Cold War and the Korean War, took for granted that America might be attacked by a foreign power.