Caveat lector -- this one is still very much under construction. It's not even an outline yet, practically....
Chicago has always had plenty of water, but often, the water has been in inconvenient places. As a result, Chicago has a long history of massive civil engineering projects. These projects aren't quite as ambitious as what's been done to the Colorado River, but they do begin to add up.
The goal of this page is to provide a history of these projects as a basis for understanding how things got the way they are. This is a work in progress, but the highlights so far include...
The river originally meandered through a sand bar to reach Lake Michigan. This formed a natural harbor which was great for canoes and small boats, but not so great for larger vessels.
There was an early effort to dredge a new harbor by the soldiers stationed at Fort Dearborn in 1818. After much discussion, a new federal effort was started in 1830 and completed in 1833. The chief engineer of this project was Jefferson Davis, later President of the Confederate States of America. (I suppose there is some kind of ironic message in that....)
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The French explorers Marquette and Joliet observed on their journey of 1673 that near Chicago, only a few feet of elevation separated the Great Lakes from the Missisippi River. A subcontintental divide passes through the Chicago area. Rivers to the west of the divide go to the Missisippi -- rivers and streams to the east used to feed into Lake Michigan.
The missionary Father Marquette, who spent a lot of time slogging through the Mud Lake that stood between Lake Michigan and the Des Plaines River, is the first on record with the idea of building a connecting canal. The canal probably would have saved the Father's life. He died in 1674 of a fever contracted during a winter he spent near "Mud Lake", the swampy west side of Chicago. (Most sources believe he spent the winter of 1673-1674 near what is now Damen and the Stevenson.)
In 1838, construction finally began on the canal. The original plan was to make a "deep cut", starting the canal at Lake Michigan level. This would have been a start at reversing the flow of the Chicago River.
Unfortunately, the deep cut plan soon ran into a layer of rock that had been overlooked. Work ground to a halt in 1841. The idea of a direct flow from the Chicago River into the canal was replaced by building a lock and pumping station at the Chicago end of the canal. It also became necessary to dig additional feeder canals leading from other rivers downstream to keep the canal flowing.
Work resumed on the new version of the canal in 1845. The modified version of the canal began operation in 1848. The canal proved fairly sucessful, despite competition from the railroads. The canal was deepened in 1871 to complete the original deep cut plan. The pumping stations at the Chicago end were still maintained and even increased in capacity, however. While the deeper canal diverted a lot more water out of the Chicago River, it still was not nearly enough to reverse the flow of the south branch.
Later, the deep cut idea was tried one more time, eventually leading to the reversal of the Chicago river in 1900, when the nearby Ship and Sanitary Canal opened.
Although the I&M had an important role in the development of Chicago, it began to suffer from competition with the railroads almost immediately. Passenger traffic on the canal disappeared almost as soon as the Rock Island Line completed it's tracks along the canal's right-of-way.
I&M shipping traffic peaked in the 1890's, but dropped off rapidly when the Ship and Sanitary canal opened. The I&M Canal officially ceased operation in 1933.
See the Chicago Public Library's version of the Illinois and Michigan Canal story.
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Lake Michigan has always supplied most of Chicago's drinking water. The Chicago River used to flow into Lake Michigan, which was unfortunate, since Chicagoans used to dump lots of untreated sewage and leftover hog and cattle parts into the river. These bad habits did not improve the quality of the drinking water.
One interim solution was to put the water intakes farther away from the shoreline. Much like smoking filtered cigarettes, the idea was to dilute the pollution. To reach the offshore "water cribs", tunnels were dug, by hand, under the lake. One tunnel, completed in the late 1860s, extended two miles offshore.
The water cribs are still there, but we think the tunnels have been replaced by pipes...but perhaps the tunnels still survive? (Update: 8/29/97... two lanes of Lake Shore drive to be closed northbound between Chicago Avenue and Oak Street, due to the collapse of a century-old water tunnel. This also will block of the lakefront "promenade" at this point. I guess I was prophetic, when I asked the question above a couple of weeks ago.)
See the Chicago Public Library's version of Tunnels Under Lake Michigan. Flushed with success, Chicagoans have also tunneled under the Chicago river many times, with only one really bad flood as a result. The CPL tells the story of the first traffic tunnels under the river. (Nothing to do with water per se, but traffic is in some senses a "fluid"...although a pretty viscous one at times....) Just for the sake of completeness, the infamous freight tunnels are described as well. The library also documents the Great Chicago Flood of 1992, which occurred when the freight tunnels sprung a leak. The Chicago Tunnel Company Railroad page tells the story of the freight tunnels.
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The Chicago fire of 1871 provided a lot of debris, much of which was dumped in the lake. This disposed of the debris, and gave the city room to expand.
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If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Actually, the Illinois and Michigan Canal was a success, but could only handle barges and small canal boats. Also, while the I&M Canal eventually diverted a lot of water, it was not enough to reverse the Chicago River under normal circumstances. Typhoid and cholera were still a big problem.
The Chicago Ship and Sanitary Canal was a bigger and better version of the I&M, and its name told you what it was for. The forerunner of the existing Metropolitan Water Reclamation District was created in 1889 to build the canal. Construction was completed in 1899, and the canal began operation in 1900 after some disputes with the neighbors.
We're still researching the details of construction. There used to be a West Branch of the South Fork of the Chicago River. It seems that the Ship and Sanitary Canal was constructed south of the West Branch and north of the I&M Canal. We're not sure what happened to the West Branch, but presumably it was filled in. There would have been a lot of leftover material from digging the Ship and Sanitary....
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This one was dug along the general route of the Stony Ford Creek.
Apparently, the original Cal Sag was a feeder canal for the Illinois and Michigan.
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This marshy area was dredged to form the present "lake" with the idea of building a great inland port. Unfortunately, the decline in lake shipping, plus the decline in heavy industry, plus the growth of trucks and planes meant this grand plan never quite got off the ground. (Also, the twisty passage down the Calumet River to Lake Calumet is a little tricky for the larger boats to handle.)
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Salt Creek meanders through the western suburbs. As the suburbs developed, Salt Creek flooding became a bigger and bigger problem. In the late 1970s, the Salt Creek Flood Control Project involved dredging lagoons in Busse Woods.
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Some of the other projects are obscure, but this one is mostly invisible. The goal of this project is to eventually complete a network of tunnels to handle storm runoff. This will help prevent flooding, and keep sewage treatment plants from being overwhelmed by the volume of water. On occassion, a heavy rainful can still result in untreated sewage being released into Lake Michigan.
The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District offers its own official description of the Tunnel and Reservoir Project.
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