CHAPTER 6
The Campbell House
George H. Campbell was born in Monroe County, New York, November 6, 1837, the son of Stewart and Jane Ann (Van Ness) Campbell.1 When eighteen he left home and went to Chicago where he found employment with the new Illinois Central Railroad Company. He worked for them in turn at Chicago, Mendota and Lena, Illinois, and in 1858 they made him their agent in the new prairie crossroad town of El Paso. The Peoria and Oquawka Railroad Company, having reached this junction two years earlier, soon made him their agent also. The depot was then on the township road which is now Main Street, exactly one block south of where he later built his Campbell House.
In 1862 Mr. Campbell noted that hotels were being combined with depots along the new railroads, and he decided that El Paso would be a logical place for one. Although only twenty-four, he secured a railroad lease to the ground in the northwest quadrant where the rail-
George H. Campbell.
roads crossed and began the construction of his building with only a twenty foot platform between it and the rails of both roads. He sent to
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