In 1887, farmers in Bennington Township of Marshall County struggled to market grain and livestock by wagon to Streator, Peoria, Bloomington, and even Chicago, more than 100 miles away. When the Santa Fe Railroad Company surveyed a line between Chicago and Kansas City through Illinois farm country, no town lay between Streator and Chillicothe for more than fifty miles. In 1889, prosperous farmer William Twist decided that the edge of his farm, nearly halfway between those towns, would be an ideal train stop, and he platted part of Section 5 in Bennington Township, Marshall County. After farmers petitioned and secured assurance of an elevator, the Santa Fe made the site a regular stop with a switch track in 1890. An elevator and then a stockyard were built, and farmers within twenty miles used the place to ship corn, oats, wheat, other grains, cattle, and hogs to Chicago and Kansas City. A depot, stores, and regular passenger service followed, and the settlement became the prosperous village of Toluca, whose early settlers were largely of English, Scotch, German, and Swedish descent; later, Italians arrived with the development of the coal mine. Charles Devlin then sought to make Toluca a railroad center: in 1897 his Toluca and Eastern connected Toluca to the Illinois Central at Rutland, and rights tied to 11,000 acres of coal lands in Evans and Roberts townships supported further plans. By 1899, another line north of Toluca, the Toluca, Marquette and Northern Railroad, began and was incorporated in 1901 to serve the Toluca Coal Mine and connect with the 3-I and Oglesby and Granville railroads. By 1905 the line reached Granville, and a new coal washer southeast of Magnolia made use of fine refuse and fine coal that had previously been discarded. Devlin's expansion collapsed in July 1905 when the Spring Valley National Bank and the First National Bank of Toluca, both led by him, closed, and within weeks he filed for bankruptcy; he died on October 31, 1905. Although only remnants remain of the railroads west of Toluca where they once crossed the Santa Fe tracks, the mines continued until 1924, the Santa Fe expanded from a single line to double track, passenger trains served the depot for many years, and in 1995 the Santa Fe Railway merged with Burlington Northern Railroad to form the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railway.