an old Indian trail. The stage traffic on this road was so successful that Naperville businessmen rejected the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad's request for a right–of–way because they feared the competition. The railroad went to Wheaton instead. Rockford was named in 1837 for the rock bottomed ford across the Rock River that enabled stagecoaches to safely cross. It was earlier known as Midway, the midpoint on the trail between Galena and Chicago. A 1968 historical map of Rockford shows the site of the stagecoach barn at the north end of Kishwaukee Street, with a dam on the old ford site. East State Street, now Business U.S. Route 20, is labeled ″part of original stagecoach road″. The long–vanished Vanceborough post office was in Twelve–Mile Grove, a stop in western Winnebago County. Postage for letters brought by the stage was 25 cents each, paid by the recipient. Twelve–Mile Grove Cemetery south of the village of Pecatonica has permanent wheel ruts from the stagecoach road near a utility building. Martha Malvina Snow (Mrs. Oscar Taylor) of Freeport rode the Frink & Walker stagecoach from Chicago to join her parents in eastern Stephenson County in September 1839. She reported that the coach left Chicago at 2:00 a.m. and stopped at an inn for breakfast at daybreak. With a break for lunch the coach continued on until it arrived in Rockford at dusk. Following a supper of prairie chickens the passengers again boarded the stage at midnight and crossed the Rock River by ferry in the dark. They climbed the sandy riverbank on foot to lighten the load for the horses pulling the coach. In the early dawn they arrived in Stephenson County, and Miss Snow left the coach at her family's log cabin several miles east of Freeport. Millville, now an empty site along Apple River in Apple River Canyon State Park, was subject to devastating floods and was completely washed away in June 1892. On 1 April 1854 M.O. Walker's stage stable on Commerce Street in Galena caught fire. The fire eventually burned 32 buildings in the Galena business district. Completion of the Illinois Central Railroad from Freeport to Galena in 1854, along with the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad between Chicago and Freeport made this stagecoach route obsolete. The Galena and Chicago Union was the first railroad built out from Chicago. The tracks moved westward, reaching Elgin in 1850, Rockford in