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Illinois and Michigan Canal
Illinois and Michigan Canal
Illinois and Michigan Canal Locks and Towpath enabled navigation across the Chicago PortU.S. National Register of Historic Places U.S. National Historic Landmark
a scene at Seneca, Illinois
age and helped establish Chicago as the transportation hub of the United States, opening before railroads were laid in the area. It ceased transportation operations in 1933. Illinois and Michigan Canal Locks and Towpath, a collection of eight engineering structures and segments of the canal between Lockport and LaSalle-Peru, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964.[3][1] Portions of the canal have been filled in.[1] Much of the former canal has been preserved as part of the Illinois and Michigan Canal National Heritage Corridor.
History
Nearest city: Coordinates:
Joliet, Illinois 41°34′11″N 88°4′11″W / 41.56972°N 88.06972°W / 41.56972; -88.06972 1,130 acres[1] 1848 State October 15, 1966[2] January 29, 1964[3] 66000332
Area: Built/Founded: Governing body: Added to NRHP: Designated NHL: NRHP Reference#:
The location and course of the Illinois and Michigan Canal In 1824, Samuel D. Lockwood, one of the first commissioners of the canal, was given the authorization to hire contractors to survey a route for the canal to follow.[4] Construction on the canal began in 1836, although it was stopped for several years due to an Illinois state fiscal crisis. The Canal Commission had a grant of 284,000 acres (1,149 km²) of federal land which it sold at $1.25 per acre (309 $/km²) to finance the construction. Still, money had to be borrowed from eastern U.S. and British investors to finish the canal.
The Illinois and Michigan Canal ran 96 miles (155 km) from the Bridgeport neighborhood in Chicago on the Chicago River to LaSalle-Peru, Illinois, on the Illinois River. It was finished in 1848 when Chicago Mayor James Hutchinson Woodworth presided over its opening; and it allowed boat transportation from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. The canal
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Most of the canal work was done by Irish immigrants who previously worked on the Erie Canal. The work was considered dangerous and many workers died, although there are no longer official records that exist to indicate how many died. The Irish immigrants who toiled to build the canal were often derided as a sub-class and were treated very poorly by other citizens of the city. The canal was finished in 1848 with a total cost of $6,170,226. Pumps were used to draw water to fill the canal near Chicago, soon supplemented by through the Calumet Feeder Canal and the DuPage River supplied water farther south. In 1871 the canal was deepened to speed up the current and to improve sewage disposal. The canal was 60 feet (20 m) wide and six feet (2 m) deep, with paths constructed along each edge to permit mules to be harnessed to tow barges along the canal. Towns were planned out along the path of the canal spaced at intervals corresponding to the length that the mules could haul the barges. It had seventeen locks and four aqueducts to cover the 140 foot (45 m) height difference between Lake Michigan and the Illinois River. From 1848 to 1852 the canal was a popular passenger route but this ended with the opening of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad in 1853 that ran parallel to the canal. The canal had its peak shipping year in 1882 and remained in use until 1933. It was replaced by the larger Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal in 1900 which remains in use.
Illinois and Michigan Canal
The lake, however, was also the source of drinking water. During a tremendous storm in 1885, the rainfall washed refuse from the river, especially from the highly polluted Bubbly Creek, far out into the lake (the city water intakes are located 2 miles (3.2 km) offshore). Although no epidemics occurred, the Chicago Sanitary District (now The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District) was created by the Illinois legislature in 1889 in response to this close call.[5] This new agency devised a plan to construct channels and canals to reverse the flow of the rivers away from Lake Michigan and divert the contaminated water downstream where it could be diluted as it flowed into the Des Plaines and eventually the Mississippi.
New Lock and Dam structures that replaced the historic Illinois and Michigan Canal In 1892, the direction of part of the Chicago River was reversed by the Army Corps of Engineers with the result that the river and much of Chicago’s sewage flowed into the canal instead of into Lake Michigan. The complete reversal of the river’s flow was accomplished when the Sanitary and Ship Canal was opened in 1900. Today much of the canal is a long, thin park with canoeing and a 62.5 mile (100 km) hiking and biking trail (constructed on the alignment of the mule tow paths). It also includes museums and historical canal buildings. It was designated the first National Heritage Corridor by US Congress in 1984. From East to West the towns along the path of the canal include: • Bridgeport (Chicago neighborhood) • Summit • Willow Springs • Lemont
Goose Ausable Locktenders Lake PriRiver Fox Aqueduct, House and arie River Morris, IL lock at Aus- F&WA, able River Morris, Aqueduct IL in Ottawa, IL Experiencing a remarkable recovery from the devastating fire of 1871, Chicago rebuilt rapidly along the shores of the Chicago River. The river was especially important to the development of the city since all wastes from houses, farms, the stockyards and other industries could be dumped into the river and carried out into Lake Michigan.
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• • • • • • • • • • Lockport Joliet Channahon Morris Seneca Marseilles Ottawa Utica LaSalle Peru
Illinois and Michigan Canal
See also
• Matthew Laflin • Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago • Treaty of St. Louis • Shabbona Trail includes 20 miles (32 km) of the Illinois and Michigan Canal Trail. • Channahon State Park • Gebhard Woods State Park • "The Volunteer" Canal Boat at LaSalle Illinois • David Leavitt (banker)
National Park Service. 2007-01-23. http://www.nr.nps.gov/. [3] ^ "Illinois and Michigan Canal Locks and Towpath". National Historic Landmark summary listing. National Park Service. http://tps.cr.nps.gov/nhl/ detail.cfm?ResourceId=221&ResourceType=Structu Retrieved on 2007-10-11. [4] Coffin, William (1889). Life and Times of Hon. Samuel D. Lockwood. Chicago, IL: Knight & Leonard Co.. p. 41. [5] The Straight Dope: Did 90,000 people die of typhoid fever and cholera in Chicago in 1885? Edward Ranney & Emily Harris. (1998). Prairie Passage: The Illinois and Michigan Canal Corridor. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
External links
• Illinois & Michigan Canal National Heritage Corridor • Illinois & Michigan Canal State Trail • Chicago Historical Society: Illinois & Michigan Canal • The Illinois and Michigan Canal, 1827–1911: A Selection of Documents from the Illinois State Archives • Canal and Regional History Special Collection at Lewis University • Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago • Canal Corridor Association • Ottawa Visitors Center
References
[1] ^ Blanche Schroer, Grant Peterson, and S. Sydney Bradford (September 14, 1975), National Register of Historic Places Inventory-Nomination: Illinois and Michigan Canal, National Park Service, http://pdfhost.focus.nps.gov/docs/NHLS/ Text/66000332.pdf and Accompanying 27 photos, undated.PDF (2.47 MB) [2] "National Register Information System". National Register of Historic Places.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois_and_Michigan_Canal" Categories: Canals in Illinois, Illinois waterways, National Historic Landmarks in Illinois, Transportation in Chicago, Illinois, History of Illinois, Canals on the National Register of Historic Places This page was last modified on 26 April 2009, at 19:41 (UTC). All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details.) Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a U.S. registered 501(c)(3) taxdeductible nonprofit charity. Privacy policy About Wikipedia Disclaimers
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