Such was the case along the Northwestern Elevated Railroad Company's line opened in 1899 from the Loop to Kimball and Linden on track now used by the CTA Red, Brown, Purple, and Yellow lines (Moffat). .
Monopolization of the "L- system in Chicago was almost unavoidable, despite the laws. Companies went bankrupt, and had to be bought out, usually by owners of competing companies. And so the foundations of Chicago transit monopolies were built. Three men were prominent in the first 50 years of Chicago transit. First, there was Michael McDonald, a minor player in the monopolies (Garfield). Next came Charles Yerkes, a man from Philadelphia transit roots (Pederson). Finally, a man named Samuel Insull took over the system (Young). .
Michael "King Mike- McDonald was the owner of the Lake Street "L- line, which was the city's second elevated train company, opening in 1893. McDonald began his fortune by gambling avidly and cheating well. He had a habit of starting and nursing transit lines, then selling them for an extreme profit. He did so with the Lake Street "L- in 1894, when he sold it to Charles Yerkes (Garfield).
Charles Tyson Yerkes was born in 1837, and was a resident of Philadelphia until 1881. A high school dropout, Yerkes worked briefly in Philadelphia's transit system before moving to Chicago at the age of forty-four (Moffat). He began to buy out the "L- companies, and also the streetcar lines. In the late 1890s, Yerkes decided to build a "Loop- through the city's main business district (Pederson). As Young says in his book, Chicago Transit, it was "one of the most brilliant and also one of the darkest chapters in transit history."".
A project of this magnitude had to be done carefully, so as to draw the least amount of protest from property owners. So Yerkes executed it in steps, the first of which was to tell the owners of the companies not under his control his plan.