Stop 1: The Chicago River
The Chicago River was a main avenue of commerce in the 1800s. It was also where open gutters drained and was the carrier of disease. In 1854 a cholera epidemic in Chicago took 1,424 lives--a rate of 2,162 per 100,000 population. It was 5.5 percent of the population at the time. Between 1860 and 1900 typhoid fever caused an average of 65 deaths per 100,000 population.
In the 1850s, a piped Lake Michigan water supply was introduced by a private company, cutting reliance upon unsanitary wells and buckets of water from the sewage-filled Chicago River. In 1867, an improved two-mile tunnel 60 feet below the lake surface was completed.
In 1878 it was decided to reverse the flow of the river to reduce the level of disease even further. A 28-mile canal was built from the south branch of the river through the low-summit barrier 12 miles inland from the lake and down to Lockport. Locks were constructed at the mouth of the river. The effect was to reduce disease substantially in Chicago and to provide an all-water transportation link between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River basin. The locks were installed to reassure other shoreline communities that the lake would not be drained to a significant extent.
In 1910 the north branch of the river was reversed by installing a dam and locks at the lakeshore in Wilmette. In 1922 the third artificial river was completed from the Little Calumet River at Blue Island to the main canal. Taken together the system comprises 71 miles of canals, channels, and rivers, all intended to improve health and navigation.
There are 37 bridges in total, with 32 of them downtown. Most are bascule type. They are raised and lowered by a roving crew of 44 tenders, down from 70 in 2000 and 500 in the 1960s. The life of a tender is described in an interview that can be found on the Internet at http://www.chicagoriver.org/news/article.asp?NewsArticleID=54.
Between 1928 and 1930 the south branch of the Chicago River was straightened between Polk Street and 18th Street. This large project reclaimed land for southern extension of the city and, more importantly, to facilitate access by railroads to their terminals at Union Station, LaSalle Street Station, and the Dearborn Street Station. Two-thirds of the $10 million cost was paid by the railroads and the remainder was financed by the City of Chicago.
One cannot help but wonder whether the reconstruction of the Chicago River could occur under today’s environmental and labor regulations, such as the Clean Water Act and Davis-Bacon Act.