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The Chicago River is a system of rivers and canals with a combined length of 156 miles (251 km) [1] that runs through the city of Chicago, including its center (the Chicago Loop). [2]
In a herculean effort to save the city from the ravages of typhoid, cholera, and other waterborne illnesses, engineer Sylvester Chesbrough suggested Chicago reverse the direction of its river away from the lake and toward the Mississippi River.
Oct 22, 2024 · The impact of the Chicago River on trade – and how the city changed because of it – was monumental. The modern city of Chicago first began in the early 1800s as a U.S. military outpost, Fort Dearborn, a key port for large trading vessels. The city grew from a population of just 4,500 in 1840, to 300,000 in 1870, to more than 1.6 million in ...
- Part One: The New Frontier
- The First Settlers
- Fort Dearborn and The First Channels
- Wolf Point
- Part Two: An Industrial Boomtown
- Part Three: Regeneration
- The Chicago River's Most Deadly Disaster
- River Wards
- Part Four: Rebirth
Native American peoples traversed Chicago’s waterways for hundreds of years before the arrival of the first Europeans. Among them were Woodland, Archaic, and Upper Mississippian peoples and later the Miami and Potawatomi. Back then, the area teemed with beaver, black bear, fox, and deer. The Algonquian people called the slow and meandering river th...
Sometime in the late 1770s, Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, a black man of French and African descent, and his wife, a Potawatomi woman named Kittahawa, became the first known settlers to build a permanent home and raise a family on the banks of the Chicago River. Leveraging Kittahawa’s kin networks, they opened what became a highly successful trading...
In 1795, as part of the Treaty of Greenville, a confederation of Native American tribes granted the United States rights to a six-mile parcel of land at the mouth of the Chicago River. Soon after, in 1803, the U.S. military built — and after a devastating battle with the Potawatomi, rebuilt an outpost. Fort Dearborn was erected across the river fro...
By the 1830s, Chicago had become a raucous frontier village with a mix of French Canadians, Yankees and Native Americans. The social center of that village was Wolf Point. Located at the junction of the Main Stem and the North and South Branches, Wolf Point provided the perfect stopping place for explorers and traders en route to and from the Chica...
It took only a few decades for Chicago to completely transform from a small, rowdy, frontier settlement to a bustling, industrial boomtown full of builders, hustlers, and businessmen. One of the few people to witness that transformation in its entirety was Gurdon S. Hubbard. He grew up in Vermont and Montreal and first arrived in Chicago in 1818 as...
Much was lost in the Great Chicago Fire: some 250 lives, 17,000 buildings, and thousands of pages of Chicago’s early history. But the monument that stands today on the southeast corner of the bridge that spans the Chicago River at Michigan Avenue is a testament to what came next: Before the ashes had cooled, Chicago had vowed to rebuild. Three days...
As Chicago’s downtown riverfront and lakefront were being reimagined and redesigned, tour boats increasingly sailed alongside freighters and other industrial vessels. In 1915, one such vessel tipped over, resulting in one of Chicago’s great tragedies. More than 800 people lost their lives on the SS Eastlandon July 24, 1915, fewer than 20 feet from ...
Elsewhere along the river, further from the lakefront, the river remained something to be tolerated rather than enjoyed. The opening of Chicago’s first wastewater treatment plant in 1928 reduced the amount of raw sewage, but the river remained laden with industrial chemicals and byproducts. Riverside real estate was cheap, and river wards, dominate...
In recent years, the relationship between Chicago’s river and people has entered an entirely new chapter. Aided by the deindustrialization of the mid-twentieth century, a growing sense of environmental stewardship, federal regulations such as the Clean Water Act of 1972, and yet another round of monumental public works projects, the Chicago River c...
May 27, 2015 · This sight would inspire the river’s permanent reversal, a task that the government decided to take on in 1887. Led by the Sanitary District of Chicago, construction began on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal in the fall of 1892.
Oct 26, 2022 · In many ways, you might even say that Chicago River history is the history of the city itself. An excellent way to learn about the history of the Chicago-area waterway system is on a City Cruises river tour such as the classic Seadog River & Lake Architectural Tour.
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Sep 15, 2024 · Chicago River, navigable stream that originally flowed into Lake Michigan after being formed by the north and south branches about 1 mile (1.6 km) west of the lake, in Chicago, northeastern Illinois, U.S. The Chicago River system flows 156 miles (251 km) from Park City (north) to Lockport (south); some 45 bridges span the river.
