Exploring the Upper Illinois River Region, Part 2: Ode to the I&M | McKinley Woods Preserve, Channahon, Illinois, USA
Now we’re just 50 yd/ 46 m to the north of the Des Plaines River overlook shown in Part 1 of this album. And we’re facing due westward.
Behold one section of the Prairie State’s most historically significant built waterway. It’s the Illinois & Michigan Canal, often just called “the I&M.” In future posts we’ll be canoeing down this rather untended segment of the canal to explore one of its aqueducts and locks at the settlement of Aux Sable. For now, however, let’s stay put in McKinley Woods and consider the I&M's history.
In Geology Underfoot in Illinois I describe the canal as “a game of sixes” for the simple reason that it was generally designed to be 60 feet wide at the surface, 36 feet wide at channel bottom, and 6 feet deep when filled. (The metric equivalents: 18 x 11 x 1.8 m.) Begun in 1836 and not completed for another 12 years, the I&M runs a total of 96 mi / 155 km, from Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood all the way down to its merging with the Illinois River at La Salle.
A lasting monument to the great effort and sacrifice of a diverse workforce—a tough, hard-drinking, and often rambunctious assortment of “navvies” of Irish, German, French-Canadian, and other ancestries—this massive construction project took a deadly toll. Hundreds of laborers, desperate to earn a living and find a home for their families in a new and alien land, lost their lives in mishaps and from diseases spread all too readily by poor sanitation practices. In an age before steam shovels, jack hammers, and dynamite, these workers, fueled by daily rations of whiskey and salt pork, used hand tools and gunpowder to excavate the waterway.
In places like this, the navvies dug through relatively yielding Quaternary glacial and fluviatile sediments. But farther up the Lower Des Plaines Valley, they had encountered Regional Silurian Dolostone bedrock at or very near the surface. Excavating through that was much harder work. But in the process of their doing so Chicagoland’s great native building material was discovered, first quarried in commercial quantities, and barged up the I&M in special “stone boats” to the growing metropolis.
While the I&M soon had to contend with a very powerful competitor in the form of railroads, it managed to remain in operation till 1933. Throughout it was a great boon to farmers and manufacturers eager to cheaply transport their goods from the Illinois hinterland to the rapidly developing Windy City. And the I&M also provided America’s first reliable transportation link between the western Great Lakes and New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico.
If you’d been standing here during its heyday, you would have seen a steady succession of canal barges plying the tranquil waters of the I&M. At first, these craft, specially designed for the waterway’s dimensions and locks, were pulled by mule or horse teams that plodded up the adjoining towpaths. Later, though, they were steam-powered and hence self-propelled. In any case, they were the very essence of laid-back travel. Passengers could easily jump off a barge and walk alongside it on the bank for a long spell, and then step back on. In these latter manic days, that leisurely mode of progress sounds idyllic.
One of the most interesting aspects of this portion of the I&M is its water height and close proximity to the Des Plaines and Illinois Rivers. The former stream is visible in this shot straight ahead and just beyond the narrow strip of trees that also contains the tow path. As you canoe down the canal, you see that its surface sits 5 or 6 feet (1.5-1.8 m) above that of the river. It's a bit disconcerting to look down on it as you paddle along.
The reason that the Des Plaines and Illinois themselves could not be used for boat traffic was simple: they contained shallows and rapids unaddressable by nineteenth-century civil engineering. And then again, a narrow canal is much easier to maintain and keep free of ice jams and snags than a broad natural river.
The other photos and descriptions of this series can be found in my Exploring the Upper Illinois River Region album.
Exploring the Upper Illinois River Region, Part 2: Ode to the I&M | McKinley Woods Preserve, Channahon, Illinois, USA
Now we’re just 50 yd/ 46 m to the north of the Des Plaines River overlook shown in Part 1 of this album. And we’re facing due westward.
Behold one section of the Prairie State’s most historically significant built waterway. It’s the Illinois & Michigan Canal, often just called “the I&M.” In future posts we’ll be canoeing down this rather untended segment of the canal to explore one of its aqueducts and locks at the settlement of Aux Sable. For now, however, let’s stay put in McKinley Woods and consider the I&M's history.
In Geology Underfoot in Illinois I describe the canal as “a game of sixes” for the simple reason that it was generally designed to be 60 feet wide at the surface, 36 feet wide at channel bottom, and 6 feet deep when filled. (The metric equivalents: 18 x 11 x 1.8 m.) Begun in 1836 and not completed for another 12 years, the I&M runs a total of 96 mi / 155 km, from Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood all the way down to its merging with the Illinois River at La Salle.
A lasting monument to the great effort and sacrifice of a diverse workforce—a tough, hard-drinking, and often rambunctious assortment of “navvies” of Irish, German, French-Canadian, and other ancestries—this massive construction project took a deadly toll. Hundreds of laborers, desperate to earn a living and find a home for their families in a new and alien land, lost their lives in mishaps and from diseases spread all too readily by poor sanitation practices. In an age before steam shovels, jack hammers, and dynamite, these workers, fueled by daily rations of whiskey and salt pork, used hand tools and gunpowder to excavate the waterway.
In places like this, the navvies dug through relatively yielding Quaternary glacial and fluviatile sediments. But farther up the Lower Des Plaines Valley, they had encountered Regional Silurian Dolostone bedrock at or very near the surface. Excavating through that was much harder work. But in the process of their doing so Chicagoland’s great native building material was discovered, first quarried in commercial quantities, and barged up the I&M in special “stone boats” to the growing metropolis.
While the I&M soon had to contend with a very powerful competitor in the form of railroads, it managed to remain in operation till 1933. Throughout it was a great boon to farmers and manufacturers eager to cheaply transport their goods from the Illinois hinterland to the rapidly developing Windy City. And the I&M also provided America’s first reliable transportation link between the western Great Lakes and New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico.
If you’d been standing here during its heyday, you would have seen a steady succession of canal barges plying the tranquil waters of the I&M. At first, these craft, specially designed for the waterway’s dimensions and locks, were pulled by mule or horse teams that plodded up the adjoining towpaths. Later, though, they were steam-powered and hence self-propelled. In any case, they were the very essence of laid-back travel. Passengers could easily jump off a barge and walk alongside it on the bank for a long spell, and then step back on. In these latter manic days, that leisurely mode of progress sounds idyllic.
One of the most interesting aspects of this portion of the I&M is its water height and close proximity to the Des Plaines and Illinois Rivers. The former stream is visible in this shot straight ahead and just beyond the narrow strip of trees that also contains the tow path. As you canoe down the canal, you see that its surface sits 5 or 6 feet (1.5-1.8 m) above that of the river. It's a bit disconcerting to look down on it as you paddle along.
The reason that the Des Plaines and Illinois themselves could not be used for boat traffic was simple: they contained shallows and rapids unaddressable by nineteenth-century civil engineering. And then again, a narrow canal is much easier to maintain and keep free of ice jams and snags than a broad natural river.
The other photos and descriptions of this series can be found in my Exploring the Upper Illinois River Region album.