Caterpillar: The Machine That Built the World

The word "Caterpillar" entered the English language as a product name in nineteen oh four, when a photographer named Charles Clements watched a Holt steam tractor crawl across a California wheat field on its endless-track system and said it moved like a caterpillar. Benjamin Holt, who built the machine, liked the name and trademarked it. The tractor that earned the name had replaced wheels with continuous metal tracks, distributing the machine's weight so it would not sink into soft ground. It was a deceptively simple idea that turned out to have enormous consequences.

By nineteen oh nine, Holt Manufacturing had opened a plant in East Peoria, across the river from this city, to supply the growing Midwest market. The machines built there went to farms, to construction sites, and then, during World War One, to the Western Front. The British Army looked at Holt tractors moving artillery through Belgian mud and said, essentially: that is the principle we want. Tank warfare descended in a direct line from the Caterpillar tractor.

Caterpillar Tractor Company was formally incorporated in nineteen twenty-five, through the merger of Holt Manufacturing and its longtime California rival, C.L. Best Tractor Company. The new company's headquarters moved to Peoria in nineteen thirty. The city and the company have been interlocked ever since.

Caterpillar today is one of the largest manufacturers of construction and mining equipment on earth. Its characteristic yellow machines appear on nearly every significant construction site in the world. The company moved its global headquarters out of Peoria in twenty seventeen, and it is now based in Irving, Texas, though it still keeps a large presence here. Its East Peoria plant has been assembling tractors continuously for over a hundred years.

The Caterpillar Visitors Center, open to the public, holds a collection of the machines across their full century of development. The biggest ones are the size of houses.