Illinois & Michigan Canal  envisioned as early as 1673 by Jolliet, and in the 1680s by Joutel, as a means to connect navigation on the Great Lakes with that on the Mississippi River system, was proposed by then Secretary of the Treasury Albert Galatin in a report to Congress in 1808; recommended for construction by President James Madison in 1814; in 1816, Maj. Stephen Long of the Corps of Topographical Engineers was sent to explore the practicability of the project and made a highly favorable report to the acting secretary of war, George Graham: "... a canal uniting the waters of the Illinois with those of Lake Michigan, may be considered of the first importance of any in this quarter of the country"; also in 1816 the Indian Treaty of St. Louis secured the necessary land consisting of a tract 20 X 70 miles that extended from Lake Michigan to the Illinois River and included the Chicago Portage and the Chicago River from its mouth to Mud Lake [see Indian boundary line]; in January 1819, Secretary of War John C. Calhoun submitted a report to Congress urging the construction of the canal as a national effort; federal authorization for the project was given by Congress with the ordinance of March 30, 1822; this led to the creation by Governor Cole and the Illinois legislature of an initial commission on Feb. 14, 1823, charged to survey the canal lands and estimate the cost of canal construction; the commissioners were: Thomas Sloo, Jr., of Hamilton County; Theophilus W. Smith, later of Chicago; Emanuel J. West; Erastus Brown; and Samuel Alexander. The commissioners visited Chicago in 1823 and later employed two civil engineers, Col. Justus Post, of Missouri, and Col. René Paul, of St. Louis, to perform the task in 1824 and 1825; on March 2, 1827, by an act of Congress, signed by President Andrew Jackson on May 21, 1830, the federal government granted to the State of Illinois alternate sections, six miles wide, of public land along both sides of a proposed route for the Illinois & Michigan Canal, to be sold and the proceeds to be used to meet the canal construction cost; on Jan 22, 1829, the Illinois legislature created the canal commission, with powers to undertake the task; the first three canal commissioners were Dr. Gershom Jayne, a druggist and physician of Springfield, Edmund Roberts of Kaskaskia, and Charles Dunn; the commission had the towns of Ottawa and Chicago – at either end of the proposed route – platted, and in September 1830 the lots were offered to the public at auction; in September 1829 Dr. William Howard of Baltimore, MD, a civil engineer in the employ of the U.S. Corps of Engineers, had been given the charge to again survey the proposed canal route; assistant engineers F. Harrison, Jr., William B. Guyon, and Henry Belin were assigned to him, and all became involved in the survey effort of 1830 and 1831. Construction of the Chicago harbor with elimination of the obstructing sandbar at the river mouth, a precondition for the future canal, began in July 1833 and by July 12, 1834, the first merchant vessel entered the river mouth [see Chicago harbor]. Construction of the canal was delayed until enough bonds could be sold to finance the project, estimated at $4,043,000; the editorial of the Jan. 16, 1836 Chicago American begins: "Illinois and Michigan Canal Bill Has Passed ! ! !"; a new board of canal commissioners was then appointed, consisting of Gurdon S. Hubbard, William F. Thornton, and William B. Archer, and subsequently J.B. Fry, and construction began on July 4, 1836, under Chief Engineer [see] William Gooding with the festive groundbreaking ceremony, amid a frenzy of real estate speculation. Work was interrupted by the 1837 economic downturn and 12 years would pass before the canal opened to barge traffic on April 26, 1848. [Readers interested in the canal traffic following the 1848 opening may wish to consult a paper written by John M. Lamb; eds. {421a}] The canal contributed vitally to the city’s early growth, but its importance was soon overshadowed by that of the railroads; furthermore, it proved incapable of securing consistent reversal of flow direction of the Chicago River, needed to prevent Chicago`s sewage from reaching Lake Michigan, even after the canal`s depth was increased at the summit level in 1871; only the completion of the "Drainage Canal" in 1900, parallel to the Illinois & Michigan Canal, solved the problem. Within Chicago proper virtually all traces of the Illinois & Michigan Canal have disappeared, but much of the canal remains southwest of Chicago remains and is now being carefully preserved by governmental effort and is made accessible to the public; street names: Canal Street (500W); Lock Street (1500 W), adjacent to where the Bridgeport lock of the canal once was. See Illinois and Michigan Canal National Heritage Corridor in Monuments. [152, 337a, 348, 421a, 557, 575, 704, 626, 661] [76]

Details of Canal Background

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