June 17, 2008

June 17, 2008

For the past week or so we have been in the Chicago area, staying with Aimee’s mom. (That is payback for her winter visits to Tucson.) Sticking with our desire to see something new every visit, we spend today exploring part of the I & M Canal National Heritage Corridor. We start at the Visitor Center in Lockport, IL where we watch a movie about the canal history. It turns out instead to be a very interesting story of early Chicago. It starts with Father Marquette and Louis Joliet, who on their return from exploring the Mississippi River system, used the two-mile Chicago Portage to return to the Great Lakes. Starting with Joliet, people dreamed of a canal connecting the Illinois and Chicago Rivers to provide an uninterrupted water route to the Midwest. In 1804 the US built Fort Dearborn to secure the portage. Finally in 1848, after bankrupting Illinois once and with the help of thousands of low-paid Irish immigrants, the 96-mile canal opened, making Chicago an instant transportation and manufacturing hub. Initially hugely successful, the canal was soon obsoleted with the laying of rail lines, but not before fueling Chicago to the position of “fastest growing city in history”. By the end of the Civil War, Chicago was the biggest US port, larger than the next six combined! In 1870 the canal hump at Summit, IL was deepened reversing the flow of the Chicago River ridding the city of its sanitary waste down the Illinois River. In the 1900’s the canal was replaced totally by the wider and deeper Sanitary and Ship Canal.

After the movie, we peruse the exhibits and walk along the old canal. From Lockport, we drive north along the corridor to the Isle a la Cache Museum. This park sits on an island in the Des Plaines River. The museum is dedicated to the fur trade business that the Chicago Portage funneled thru the area. It was a natural meeting place for the local Potowatomi Indians to exchange beaver pelts for manufactured goods from the French Canadian traders.