Speaker 1: Welcome and thank you for visiting the Informatorium 56 Podcast Studio.

This location is dedicated to general education and information and features this podcast.

I am Greg Bell and my partner Julia Korony is here with me.

How are you doing today, Julia?

Speaker 2: I’m doing really well.

Speaker 1: Well, that is good to hear.

And Julia, we are obviously going to be talking about the Chicago River in large part today and the surrounding area.

But we were actually recently in Chicago not too too long ago.

Wanted to ask you, what were your thoughts and impressions of the city?

Speaker 2: Well, I always loved Chicago.

I’ve been there a few times and it’s just a very nice city.

I remember being there and being like, oh, for such a big city, it’s very clean.

But yeah, they have a nice museum, you know, they have the Bean, and I just always enjoyed Chicago.

Speaker 1: Yes, the famous Bean.

Yeah, I think the Field Museum was probably my favorite part.

I really thought that thing was pretty amazing.

They have that, what is it, Sue the T-Rex?

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: And I think that exhibit kind of went through like all of the time periods and went way back, you know, showing all these like ancient fossils and then came all the way up through to today.

And I always like that kind of stuff when they can make a big display of all that information into like a tight compact area.

That was pretty neat.

We were actually on a trip to Yellowstone, so when we were driving back, we stopped to see family in the Chicago area.

So we were there for a day.

It’s not like we had a tourist view of the city, but to me, I really did like it.

I mean, it seemed like it was a really nice place to hang out and we did get to stop at a bunch of places.

So that was pretty cool.

Speaker 2: Yeah, it’s a really nice city.

Speaker 1: For sure.

Okay, so today’s story is actually really kind of a bunch of cool stories from the history of Chicago that culminate in this amazing feat: the backward river.

And we’re going to cover a long time period and a bunch of stories, so I’m going to start out with a little bit of a roadmap.

So let’s start off with the rundown.

First, the first part of the story is going to be exploration.

From the time Europeans got to what is now the Chicago area, they were looking for a better trade route to the Mississippi and of course the Northwest Passage.

Second, we’re going to look at why the Chicago area is a key cog in all of this because where it’s at is actually between the Great Lakes Basin and Mississippi Basin where those two basins are closest to meeting.

Next, because Chicago was on this path, Chicago develops into a huge city, which intertwines with another part of the story, which is the desire to have a permanent all-water route through this area so you can get from the Atlantic all the way through past the Mississippi.

Now, as the city grows, because its drainage actually runs into Lake Michigan, the city starts poisoning its own water supply, which is the next part of the story.

And then they plan to either clean up the sewage, get cleaner water, a bunch of ideas they come up with to try to take care of these issues.

It turns out Chicago is also right at a continental divide.

So somebody gets the idea that you can actually reverse the Chicago River’s flow by digging a canal deeper on the Illinois side and then the Michigan side all the water will basically now be going downhill and ta-da, you now have all the water running the other way with all your waste and everything going into the Mississippi instead of out into your own drinking water.

Now, finally, it turns out like none of these plans were quite right.

So they’re all a bunch of interesting things that, you know, are still kind of relevant today.

But in the end, what they do is they end up building one of the most amazing man-made contraptions in the United States, which is the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, which successfully and so far permanently reverses the Chicago River.

Today we are going to cover the first few steps of that progression and then we will pick up from there in the next episode.

And then of course we’ll wrap it up with the summation and the big takeaway at the end.

So let’s dive into the details and make a good story of it, okay?

Okay, so let’s start off with the story with the Europeans at the time when they are in search of trade routes west from the Atlantic Great Lakes region westward, including through what is now the Chicago area.

The French are the relevant party for our story and they are going to send an expedition in 1672 led by Louis Joliet down the Mississippi River.

So to set the scene for the goals of exploration and just quickly the geography of the area at the time, the Chicago River, the geography of the region as the Europeans get there and more specifically as this expedition is about to take place, the river enters roughly the middle of the city on a relatively straight horizontal line from Lake Michigan through Chicago and it goes inland about a mile or so.

Now, there’s a north branch that comes down to meet it and then the south branch comes up to meet it and they both flow into that horizontal line out into Lake Michigan.

So if you go to your keyboard and you type like a close parenthesis and then a dash, you’d have that little symbol like that half circle and a dash.

That’s kind of what it looks like.

Now, the north branch of the Chicago River goes much farther north than the south part goes south, but that’s the area that we’re talking about.

So if you can imagine that right off near the coast of Lake Michigan, that’s really the important part of the geography for our story.

Speaker 2: So I just want to make sure that I’m understanding this because I always thought that a river flows only one way, but it turns out that the Chicago River flows south but also north and then they meet and then they go east into the…

Speaker 1: I think it’s more just that they call them both the Chicago River.

So the bottom half is coming up and then they both empty into that little outlet that goes out into the lake.

So yeah, you have like a little bit of a C and the top half is considered the north branch and the bottom half is considered the south branch and then they meet and then flow out into the lake.

Speaker 2: Gotcha.

Speaker 1: Okay, so a little to the west of this, you’re going to have the Des Plaines River.

Now that runs southwest.

It’s kind of parallel to the Chicago River, you know, in the sense that it’s running north and south and it’s close to the lake relatively speaking.

But there’s a little bit of space in between and the Des Plaines actually flows a little bit more west and it goes southwest and it keeps going and it eventually flows into the Illinois and then from there into the Mississippi.

So that is how the rivers ran in the 1600s.

Chicago ran into Lake Michigan, the Des Plaines to the west into the Mississippi.

And that is the world as our explorers will come upon it.

So let’s look at some of the exploration goals at the time.

So the Northwest Passage, Europeans were looking for the Northwest Passage for a very long time.

It goes on for hundreds of years.

Speaker 2: So basically they just want to get from Europe to Asia, to India for the tea and the spices and all that stuff.

Speaker 1: It’s the same thing that’s been going on forever.

Yeah, it went on before that for all the way back to Columbus and it continues after this.

So that’s one of just the general things is just general exploration and trying to find like a path…

Speaker 2: Like a good water route.

Speaker 1: Right, into what they would call, you know, the Orient at the time.

Now this is definitely one of the goals for the French at the time, okay? They’re trying to get from the Atlantic and their settlements, colonies, whatever you want to call it up in Canada through basically the country so they can get through to this Northwest Passage.

And this is cited specifically as a goal of the French in the history.

So there’s a quote, it said the venture was ordered by Count Frontenac, Governor of New France, who like many before him sought a Northwest Passage across the North American continent to the Orient.

Now another goal would have likely been the fur trade.

So by 1672, there are already French fur trading routes along the St.

Lawrence and the Ottawa Rivers and down the Mississippi.

But fur trading routes around the Great Lakes over to the Mississippi, they’re not—it’s not an all-water route.

Also, importantly, the Mississippi has not been mapped out by Europeans.

So, you know, they’re on the edge of it, they’re in the northern part of it, they don’t have it all explored.

They don’t know where everything goes.

Speaker 2: They don’t actually know where the Mississippi goes.

Speaker 1: No, there’s like stories and it’s one of the things that comes up, they talk about how the Native Americans keep telling them, you know, like yeah this river it goes all the way down into another great sea they call it.

And, you know, just to tell you what that is obviously they’re talking about the Mississippi ending in what we call the Gulf of Mexico.

But at the time it’s not known that that’s actually a thing that happens, but the Native Americans are pretty reliable.

Speaker 2: Yeah, they know it.

The Native Americans know it pretty well.

Speaker 1: It’s not like they don’t believe them, you know what I mean? So there’s another source that was talking about the French fur trade actually and it says that they were focused on expanding and monopolizing the fur trade in North America because like I said they were told many times about this path that goes down to the great sea.

So basically they have some info on the Mississippi running towards like I said what is obviously the Gulf, but it’s not mapped out.

Another source actually focused on at the time that they were trying to transport copper ore from Lake Superior to what they believed was again that great river that heads out.

Now copper is much heavier than fur, so ideally if they can find an all-water route, that’s going to be much easier and it makes all the sense in the world.

The ore is heavy, you’d want an all-water route to transport it.

There is ore in the Superior area.

There’s actually native artifacts, it’s kind of interesting in that area from 6,000 years ago made out of copper.

These two guys actually found that area later on and it’s documented.

There’s a bunch of sources from the time that say the natives told the French it was there.

Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, they were looking for copper.

They were using copper in all kinds of stuff at the time.

You know, they’re using it in jewelry, watches, clocks.

They were making nuts and bolts and utensils.

Somehow said roofs made out of copper.

And as early in the 1600s it was used to make telescopes and mirrors and the navigational instrument, which would be what would help them to get down the Mississippi.

It’s the backbone of the industrial revolution.

So yeah, I can see why they were like trying to find it and get it down the river to get it over to Europe.

Speaker 1: Right, and it makes all the sense in the world.

The only problem is I can’t find anything that says this is specifically what they were doing on this trip because like I always try to find other sources and document and get something as old as I can that talks about what’s going on at the time and a lot of these other ones are from back then and it’s like letters from this person or that person that are at least second-hand have been documented in other people’s work.

The problem is this source I found that said this, I don’t know that it’s actually true.

According to what I’m finding, the French were searching for copper at the time, but they all came up with nothing.

Speaker 2: But they knew the Native Americans had it, so they knew it was there.

I guess Native Americans didn’t want to tell them where it was.

Speaker 1: Right, but it just—well, yeah, I mean it just doesn’t have anything to do with this particular story, I guess, as far as what he was actually doing.

And I emailed the museum that I found, there’s a museum in the area that actually mentioned this and they never got back to me.

So as far as I can tell, Joliet looked for copper a few years earlier, didn’t find any, and all the others are saying France never actually found any then in the end.

So we’re going to leave that there and stick with the goals as the Northwest Passage and, you know, obviously the general fur trade exploration and trying to get that going a little bit better, although they were actually doing well.

So with the goals reviewed, let’s jump to France’s actual expedition.

So the scene is we’re in 1672, okay? Now Louis XIV sent explorers.

We do know that a part of this was I said to explore the Mississippi in the area because they thought, you know, that the river ended up going down towards this great water region.

I actually was thinking about somebody doing this and you’re just like I’m going to get on a boat and I’m going to go down here into this area and I’m going to start exploring the Mississippi River.

I mean, when you think about how crazy that is to me, it’s just I’m wondering what kind of person it would take to do something like that.

I mean, because like, you know, I can’t drive without Google Maps without getting lost.

I mean, it’s like I have it on to go to work and back when I’ve been there 500 times.

So I think the closest I can come to it was that trip we had, you know, when you drive across country and you just there’s this feeling you get where you don’t have to go anywhere because you don’t have any time to be there and it’s like you’re just like I don’t have a plan, I don’t have to get there on a certain time, it’s just totally unexplored and I just think that’s got to be a crazy feeling and I’d really like to know what that’s like.

But as like I said, that’s the closest I can get, just being like I’m going to drive 3,000 miles out to the West Coast and it doesn’t matter what time I get where, it doesn’t matter I can’t get lost because I don’t have to be anywhere.

Speaker 2: Yeah, but it’s still scary to not know where you’re going and what’s in front of you and who knows, you know, at that time they believed in all kinds of cryptids and stuff and it was like, oh, who knows what you’re going to encounter on this river.

It’s a big wide river.

Speaker 1: Yeah, and it comes up as part of the story.

That’s kind of what made me think about it because here in a minute we’re going to find out I think that might have actually been pretty relevant that it is kind of a frightening thing to be doing.

But you needed a certain person to do this kind of thing and for Louis, that’s going to be Joliet, okay? So he’s going to send him on this expedition.

Now Joliet went through Green Bay and down the Mississippi and he went as far as the Arkansas River.

Now the story is he makes it far enough down the Mississippi and confirms that you can get to what is the Gulf of Mexico by way of the Mississippi.

Speaker 2: How did he confirm this?

Speaker 1: I’m not sure.

So it says he was worried that he will lose his precious info.

Like a couple different sources kind of put it almost with the exact wording, so.

And then he heads back before he loses it.

And I, you know, if you think about it, losing his precious info means to me that means he’s going to—he’s the one getting lost, right?

Speaker 2: He’s scared.

Speaker 1: He means he’s scared.

He’s like he saw something on that riverbank, he’s like, you know what, I think I’m good, let’s go back.

It’s like I mean he’s taking notes, but I mean quite frankly what kind of information are we talking about here? I guess, you know, the maps and stuff like that are pretty important, but it sounds a little bit like maybe it was like, hey, I’ve been out here for a long time.

But either way, you know, he’s a better man than me for doing all this stuff, so I’m not disparaging him.

So I hope the apologies to his family and distant relatives.

Speaker 2: And everyone in the town of Joliet.

Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.

So honestly to me it seems like he was pretty far away from the mouth.

Like I said, you know, if you look at a map and you just see where the Arkansas River runs up, it’s not getting there.

But anyway, that doesn’t matter for now because the part of our story that is actually really interesting and important is actually his trek back.

So it doesn’t really matter how far he made it or why he came back.

Speaker 2: Um, I’m curious, were there French people yet in in Louisiana, what is now Louisiana, like New Orleans yet, or was that not like settled yet?

Speaker 1: I believe there was not because I think the following expedition after Joliet is—and I can’t remember his name, I did come across it—but there’s another gentleman that comes through and he is the one who basically gets down to the bottom of the Mississippi and plants the flag and says this is France.

Speaker 2: I see.

Speaker 1: So and that’s when they get the New Orleans and I believe like Louisiana, you know what I mean? That’s when they get all that territory.

He’s like everything over here is mine.

But I pretty sure that’s when Louisiana got taken by France or at least, you know, New Orleans the New Orleans area down at the end of the river.

Speaker 2: Right, because I was thinking if there was someone already down there and then like he went up the river and they met, it was like, oh yeah, this goes over to the Gulf.

All right, well I’m going to go home.

Speaker 1: Oh no, no, no.

So yeah, the best I can understand it is, you know, the French are in Canada, that’s where all they’re doing all the fur trading.

And like they haven’t gotten down there because that’s why they’re exploring the Mississippi, you know, it’s to find out where everything’s at and how far it goes.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: But I don’t think anybody came in like a different direction or anything, you know, it’s like they’re going from that’s their base up in Canada.

Speaker 2: Well, someone might have, just not a French person.

Speaker 1: Right, but as far as I know, like he’s the first one there.

So this guy that comes after Joliet.

Speaker 2: Gotcha.

Speaker 1: And like I said, you know, the trek back is our relevant part.

So, you know, the brass tacks of this is Louis sent Joliet down the Mississippi, he does this and he is now on his way back.

And that leads us to the second part of our story, which is why Chicago is Chicago.

So today and really starting in the 19th century, the Chicago area is a key cog in US trade.

And this all happens because it is where the Great Lakes Basin and the Mississippi Basin are closest to naturally meeting.

And Joliet is the one that finds this out as far as Europeans are concerned.

So imagine two huge basins and realize that where Chicago is today is where they get really close to meeting, okay? So you have the Mississippi and you have that huge Great Lakes region and the closest place that they come to meeting naturally is right where Chicago ends up being.

So back to Joliet and his expedition, on the way south, Joliet had actually made friends with Native Americans who on his trek back now show him a little secret.

And that secret is that one can pretty much get from the Mississippi to Lake Michigan by water.

But there’s a few caveats.

So what you do is you take the Mississippi up to the Des Plaines and you start heading northwest, excuse me, northeast towards Michigan to what is called Mud Lake, which almost connects the Great Lakes and the Mississippi via small creeks that extend off from each of them.

And when this area in this Mud Lake flooded, you could just go straight through on a boat all the way to Lake Michigan.

Now, when it’s dry, obviously you can’t do that.

But even then, a little bit of a land trek in between these stream areas is actually quite doable.

Now, I’m not saying it’s fun.

I would not like to be taking part in this, but doable.

And the path was called the Chicago Portage.

Now, portage is just carrying a boat or its cargo between two navigable waters.

Speaker 2: Oh, I didn’t even think of that, that they actually had to carry their boat.

I’m thinking they’re just carrying the goods, but they also carry got to—they have to carry their boat.

Speaker 1: Right, I mean definitely when you’re doing the exploration because, you know, there’s nobody else there.

Speaker 2: Well, you also want that boat back on the lake.

Speaker 1: Right, but I’m saying when the—like when you start making it more organized, you know, you could have a boat on both sides.

Speaker 2: Yeah, but you have to have someone there to man…

Speaker 1: All your stuff there, yeah, exactly.

Because what—you’re going to have your stuff on it, so they actually used the boat to get across with the stuff on it.

It’s not like you’re now not only do you have to carry the boat, you have to carry what’s in the boat and get it across.

This is why I’m saying this is not a fun time, but it is a very important part of the story because this is where, you know, everything comes from is this particular area.

Speaker 2: I wonder what that must have looked like, you know, just seeing all the mud and the rivers and all the grass and stuff.

It must have been quite a sight.

Not just concrete buildings that it is now.

Speaker 1: Yeah, because it is critical to some further parts of our story today that it is just a very muddy area and it ends up being huge problem like I said in the rundown.

So like that is just—it’s endemic to the area.

It’s muddy and it’s a mess and it’s like, you know, you have to do a lot of things if you want to be in that area.

So at the time, even just traveling through it is really just an arduous task.

Speaker 1: Some info on the portage itself.

There was actually a paper on the location of this portage.

It’s called “The Location of the Chicago Portage Route of the 17th Century.” And this was written by the Chicago Historical Society, and this was in 1923.

Like I said, I’m trying to get, you know, these original things if they’re available, at least.

And this paper, it’s called a paper, it’s over 100 pages.

It has these original maps in it and all this data made from the Chicago area at the time.

It’s really kind of a neat thing to read through.

The goal of this paper was to find the original portage, basically just because they wanted to memorialize it.

And it explains that there were actually two paths that they used.

There was a one and a half miles of prairie that normally separated the two river systems was denominated by the French, okay? So that’s called the Le Portage de Chicagou port.

And then there’s this route by way of the Chicago River and Mud Lake down to the Des Plaines Valley, and that was known as the Chicago Portage Route.

Now, importantly, back then they actually even say in this paper, like this is actually the reason Chicago becomes Chicago.

And they go on a little bit here and it says, “A little lake a few miles in length had its outlet at its western end draining into the Des Plaines River, while its eastern end in average seasons came within one and a half miles of the headwaters of the South Branch of the Chicago River, thus forming the shortest and most direct connection between the Great Lakes St.

Lawrence River system and the Mississippi River system, those two mighty continental waterways.” And then they say its value in the past as the connecting link of transportation is paralleled by Chicago’s present-day importance as the terminal and connection point of more railroads and other means of travel than any other place.

Speaker 2: So the St.

Lawrence River system is what connects the Great Lakes to the Atlantic? So you can from the Atlantic you get into the St.

Lawrence River system and then through the Great Lakes and then you get to Michigan and then you can hopefully connect to the Mississippi.

Speaker 1: Right, and at the time like they had some of the paths where they could get from… so it’s a little complicated and I’m glad you brought that up because throughout the story the time periods change and the goals change and I’m trying to put it all in like an order so it kind of goes together, but it is a little bit of an amorphous thing where it’s like, you know, right now we’re trying to get to here, then we’re trying to get to there, and originally we’re just trying to get the whole thing, but they didn’t know where they were going so it doesn’t make any sense sometimes because they didn’t really know what was there.

Speaker 2: Well because then eventually they also build the Erie Canal, right? That connects Erie to I don’t know which lake.

Speaker 1: Right, so generally… so the starting point is that naturally these waters are all connected.

You can get through the Great Lakes, excuse me.

You can go from the Atlantic through all of the Great Lakes.

The problem is you’re not going to take a boat over Niagara Falls, you know what I mean? So like they’re all there, like there is a water route, but it’s not until later on when we start, you know, building… when I say we, I mean, you know, people start building, you know, dams and locks and stuff to get past these little or actually rather large portions where you can’t just, you know, take your boat through it.

Speaker 2: Or to make the route just a hair shorter, maybe just cut through rather than going around the whole lake and yeah.

Speaker 1: That too.

And then you obviously have more… you’re carrying more, we start transporting more, so it becomes more… like today it’s so complicated, it’s crazy.

But back then, you know, just to point out there was a water connected, you just couldn’t travel through it.

So sometimes they’re trying to get from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi, other times like I said, obviously the Northwest Passage doesn’t help you if you’re not going through all the way from the Atlantic through, like that was the original goal.

So like you said, if I say it different, it’s just kind of because, you know, it’s kind of what the context of the situation is.

Um, but then yeah, so Erie, the Erie Canal comes in and then you can kind of go from that area all the way through and that’s where you end up getting to the Chicago River area as we’ll see another reason it becomes incredibly important.

And as I said, you know, this paper was talking about the area and they just say that, you know, in fact the marvelous city of Chicago itself is simply the present-day development of the trading post at the old Chicago portage and the very name Chicago is a contraction of its old name, Chicago Portage, which I thought was really interesting.

Incidentally, and they spell it different, it’s C-H-I-C-A-G-O-U was the original way.

I don’t know if they pronounced it the same or not, but it’s supposedly the word Native Americans in the area used for the wild onions that grow there.

There’s a couple different very similar stories, but that was the one that popped up a bunch, so apparently it was, you know, the Native Americans were probably calling it that and then it just kind of stuck and then it was applied to the city.

But you can see why this area is critical because of these two huge basins are so close to meeting here.

And as a result of this being the closest point to meeting, the result is our next step of the story, which is Chicago grows into a huge city and a center of transportation.

So step three: Chicago grows into a huge city and center of transportation.

This area blows up, but it takes some time.

So now that we have the framework of the area and its importance, let’s do a little bit of a timeline here on the growth of Chicago.

Okay, so in 1683, Fort de Chicago is formed by French Jesuits.

That is really hard to say.

French Jesuits.

Speaker 2: Nailed it.

Speaker 1: Couple more tries and I’ll get it.

It is immediately used for trade and traders take advantage of the portage and they do this by timing their return trips.

So what they do is they plan on going out, they have a certain amount of time to do all their, you know, their fur trapping and all that and then on the way back they make sure they come back at the right time so the area will be flooded and then they can take the water route the whole way back to where they started.

Now, it’s like you’re just out there and they’re like, “Hey, we gotta get back.” So then, you know, you basically know the time and you get on it.

But the problem is if the water isn’t high enough for whatever reason, you know, you have to portage.

And it sounds like it was somewhat predictable, but knowing how weather works, I’m assuming it wasn’t perfect.

And then the portage paper talks about how, you know, even the firsthand accounts are all over the place.

You know, some people say, you know, when it’s up, the water’s up, you can sail right through.

Other accounts that talk about it being flooded and then being able to get a six-foot canoe through.

So I mean, at least to me it sounds like it’s going to be a little unpredictable.

But either way, if you don’t hit it at the right time or obviously if you come through you miss the season, you have to portage your boat and obviously carry all your stuff and it’s not fun, okay? So this is not like a good time to be doing this.

There’s actually quotes from the time from people who were… who saw this and were on the trip.

And the one says, “Four men only remained in a boat and pushed with poles while six or eight others waded in the mud alongside and still others busied themselves in transporting our goods on their backs.

All the while the men were beset by leeches.”

Speaker 2: I mean, give me two cucumber slices and some lemon water and you’ve got a spa.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I’m not going anywhere near this.

I mean, this is madness.

But I mean, that’s what they did.

Speaker 2: I mean, people paid money to get bled by leeches.

Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.

So yeah, this sounds like a blast.

You know, we will put that on our list of places to go next summer.

Speaker 2: Next time we go to Chicago, it’s like, “Can we get the portage experience?”

Speaker 1: The portage experience, yeah, that would be great.

So next on our timeline, in the 1780s you have the first permanent settlement of Chicago by Europeans by Mr.

Baptiste.

And Julia, why don’t you tell us a little bit more about him?

Speaker 2: Yeah, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable.

His story is fascinating.

Believed to be born sometime in between 1745 and 1750 in what is now Haiti.

And he was considered a pioneer trader at the time.

Not much is known of his early life.

Some people believe that he was born a free man, the son of a Frenchman and his black wife.

I don’t know how accurate that actually is.

There’s a good possibility that Du Sable’s mother was a slave, but him being a free man makes me think that the marriage bit of the story might be true.

It’s just no way to get any of it, that’s why his early life is kind of a mystery.

Speaker 1: Right, yeah, I don’t… he doesn’t come from a family that’s prominent enough to be tracking his every move.

Speaker 2: Right, but at that time in what was then the French colony, some poor white man, you know, there were so many different levels that not just white men, but some of the white people that were on the poorer side would marry free black people that were there.

So it’s very possible, but again there’s no really way to know.

So in the 1770s, he settled at the spot where the Chicago River meets Lake Michigan.

He was not the first trader, obviously, to come through the area, but he was the first non-native, non-native that stayed.

And he married a Native American woman, her name is Kitihawa.

There’s also a record of him managing a British estate on the St.

Clair River in Michigan, which not really sure how that happened because he was very pro-American and pro-French in some of the sources that I read.

But by 1790s, he was kind of a big deal in the area, especially when it came to the region’s fur and grain trade.

He was on the shore of the lake for about 20 years.

Speaker 1: Oh really? Yeah, that’s a long time.

Speaker 2: Yeah, he was there, him and his wife.

They had two kids.

They established quite a large estate.

And to keep referring to him as just a trader seems a little diminishing.

He was clearly a very well-respected businessman and entrepreneur, even kind of a diplomat, you know, between the natives and the traders that would come through the area.

I think he worked the system pretty well, you know, and tried to set everything up.

Speaker 1: As far as like setting up trade or peace or…?

Speaker 2: I think so.

I think he was involved in a little bit of everything.

He was a naturalized citizen of the…

I can’t remember the tribe’s name, but the tribe that his wife was part of.

He became a naturalized citizen.

It’s just kind of what Native Americans did at the time, like if you were married then you kind of became part of the nation of that tribe.

Speaker 1: Oh, that’s interesting.

Speaker 2: So with his help, commerce in the area thrived.

And this earned him the title of Father of Chicago, and as well as being Chicago’s first resident.

His estate included numerous buildings, including a mill, a bakehouse, a dairy, a smokehouse, a pottery house.

He had a stable, a barn, a workshop.

Speaker 1: So he owned all of this stuff?

Speaker 2: Yeah, he owned all of this stuff.

This all this land and all these buildings.

So again, to just refer to him as a trader, like I said, seems diminishing because he had… he built a, you know, for the area, he built quite a estate.

Speaker 1: Right.

Well, my…

I mean, everything I read, they talked to him… they speak of him as the founder of Chicago.

So like he got that moniker.

So I mean, he had to be doing something.

So I think a lot of people, you know, gave him a lot of credit.

I just hadn’t heard all of that, that he was… had that much established property and business going on at the time.

Speaker 2: Right.

And for him to be this successful, he clearly had a relationship with the local people and as well with the traders that were coming in, you know.

Speaker 1: Well yeah, because there’s nobody else there.

He’s… you know, if he was out there by himself and not getting along with people, you know, he wouldn’t make it very long.

This is a somewhat inhospitable area if you’re, you know, if you’re going to be surly.

So…

Speaker 2: Right.

But it turns out that in the 1800s, he had enough.

He sold everything and they moved to Missouri and he died there in 1818.

But it’s quite fascinating and just how successful he was in, you know, at that time.

Speaker 1: Yeah, he was… he’s an interesting figure in the story for sure.

And then actually the area too, because, you know, while he’s there, you know, maybe not specifically, you know, his particular area, but the area that becomes Chicago changes hands multiple times throughout this time period from Native American to British and, you know, the French.

But eventually it becomes a part of the territory of Illinois on February 9th in 1809 and now it’s moving towards being a permanent part of what becomes, you know, the United States.

In 1812, before the war, just as a way of reference to what we’re talking about, like I said, it’s… there’s not a lot going on there.

There were only 15 private homes in Chicago.

After war is declared and Fort Dearborn is taken by the British, only four will remain.

So that’s 1812, we’re down to four houses in what becomes Chicago.

It’s hard to believe considering where it goes, but that’s where we were at.

Then in 1818, on December 3rd, Illinois becomes the 21st state in the Union.

But by 1833, when the town of Chicago is incorporated, there are still no more than 200 people living there.

Like I said, it blows up, but it takes time and then it just goes off like a rocket.

That brings us to what is the next step in our story, which intertwines kind of the explosive surge in population and transportation growth through to 1900.

And that is also, like I said, intertwined with the interest to have an all-water route.

So these things kind of all go together because it’s hand in hand.

You know what I mean? The population goes up, transportation’s needed, everybody suddenly wants an all-water route.

Well, not suddenly, but it becomes more prominent.

So these things kind of go together and we’re going to take them together.

So let’s start out with the all-water route.

During this time, interest peaks in having this all-water trade route from, you know, the Atlantic and Great Lakes down to New Orleans.

Now, the interest has been going on way back because actually our guy Joliet, when he traversed that portage, he actually told France, “Hey, we only have to dig about a mile and a half through this area to connect these waterways.” Now, spoiler alert, it is not going to end up being that easy.

But the point remains, you know, this is a possibility on people’s minds.

People are envisioning a route from the Atlantic and the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.

So then in 1803, the Louisiana Purchase is completed.

So, you know, you thought people wanted a waterway before, now it’s really what everybody wants in the country.

So they want to be able to get to the west side, you know, to the Mississippi and beyond so they can settle this area now that they have the area of Louisiana from the French.

So the idea comes up, let’s make a canal.

Suddenly, you know, if you can put a canal in here, you don’t have to be doing this portage.

Obviously, you know, we’ve covered the benefits of being able to skip that process.

So in 1823, now that they have everything in the United States is basically has everything east of the Mississippi and this huge chunk west of the Mississippi from the Louisiana Purchase, Congress gets involved and is ready to make a canal.

Kind of.

Congress doesn’t actually build the canal.

Things were obviously done a little differently back then.

But what they try to do is finance it.

So they give Illinois 300,000 acres of land to sell to fund the canal.

Speaker 2: And this is all land that’s around the future canal, like in that area?

Speaker 1: Uh, yeah, I believe.

If all of it, I’m not positive about all of it, but yes, indeed that is a part of the… it’s the part where the canal is surrounding that area.

Speaker 2: So if all goes well, this is going to be prime real estate.

Speaker 1: Exactly.

Um, yeah, they actually have…

I found a map where you can see the land sales over time after this land grant up through the time that the canal gets built kind of.

And it shows like the area around there being sold at the time of, you know, when it gets released, that’s when the sales pop up around that canal area.

Obviously, I don’t think anybody would be there before, but it’s just you can actually see it documented though.

It’s just boom, they get this land and then it just starts growing in that area whereas there were no sales before.

Now all of a sudden it’s, you know, it’s a really prime market.

Speaker 2: Everybody wants a piece of that Mud Lake.

Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.

Well, they know what’s coming, I guess.

You know, and then, you know, and this it’s just interesting because this is, you know, this is literally the direct connection between the transportation and the population.

You know, that’s… that’s the fact that you’re putting in a canal is actually growing the population because now people are coming for it.

Speaker 2: Well, they’re coming to build it too, and then they’re coming to trade.

Yeah, they’re going to also trade on it.

Speaker 1: But the people, you know, buying the surrounding area to finance it, you know, they’re going to be building towns and, you know, and businesses and stuff because they know the canal’s going to be there.

In 1836, the canal construction begins.

It’s going to be called the I&M Canal for the Illinois and Michigan, which is, you know, the two bodies of water that are relevant.

It’s going to end up being the first huge canal in the area to make a water route through the area.

Speaker 1: Okay, however, due to what they called “hard financial times,” which I put quotes around that, Illinois has to end up borrowing millions to finish the canal.

So after selling all this property and getting all this money…

Speaker 2: It wasn’t enough, huh?

Speaker 1: It’s not enough.

And the hard financial times, which is funny because the first time I read it, that’s how it was quoted in my source.

They’re actually referring to the panic of 1827 and the depression that followed.

So when they say hard financial times…

Speaker 2: That’s so humble.

Hard financial times.

Then everything crashed.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it was a problem.

Yeah, like this was not good.

So it was a rough time to be doing this.

Speaker 2: I guess it wasn’t as bad as, you know, the 1920s, but yeah.

Speaker 1: But yeah, no, exactly.

But it’s hard when you’re having problems with people believing in money to, you know, to get things built.

So, but with the loans, the canal does get built and then the I&M is finished in 1848.

One source had it as 1845.

I don’t know, I found a bunch of them that said 48, including Illinois.gov, so you know, we’re going to go with that.

I do my best to track this stuff down, but I don’t know why they had a different number.

But some canal facts, just generally speaking, what they’re building here.

It heads 96 miles, okay? So it goes from the Chicago River and it runs parallel with the Des Plaines and ends in the Illinois.

Speaker 2: Well, I thought it was going to be one mile? Joliet was like, “Oh, it’s a mile, a mile and a half, we got this.”

Speaker 1: Yeah, that’s not actually how it worked.

And we’ll see later that at the time they actually had slightly different plans too, which don’t come to fruition at this time because of those financial troubles.

But that is what they plan out for this one.

And it’s 60 feet wide and 6 feet deep.

And you know, it’s high tech.

They had to construct 15 lift locks, five aqueducts, and four hydraulic power basins.

So basically, you know, where you have to move the boats up and down to get over certain areas.

They’re putting all this stuff in the canal.

And then it uses a pump system to fill the water.

Okay, so this isn’t deep enough to like control the flow of the river.

This is going to get pumped water in it so you can take a boat through it.

Speaker 2: So it’s kind of like the Panama Canal with a deluxe system where you like go in and then they lock it and they lift the boat and then they go and like lower the boat.

Speaker 1: Well, I think… but yeah, I mean, that’s what… but there’s certain areas where you have to get over them.

I think one down near the end is actually… there was a high drop-off where they needed one too so you could finish the trip.

But this river, this canal, it’s used a lot.

Its peak tonnage is over a million tons in 1882.

The I&M Canal was the first inland canal.

Instead of being a mule-drawn canal, they actually used steam-propelled boats after 1871.

Yeah, so like I said, this isn’t the type of thing where, you know, you’re just going to, you know, stroll down the river and you get in your boat and you just kind of keep going.

It’s a, you know, it’s a process.

Like, you know, there’s a lot going on there.

But they actually, like I said, this is as far as I can tell, this is, you know, the highest tech going at the time.

Speaker 2: You’re going from mule to steam.

I’m thinking so then the mule’s like walking along the shoreline.

That’s what I’m imagining is a mule’s walking along the shoreline pulling the boat.

Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.

I mean, that’s what they had to do to get it to move.

Speaker 2: And then you got a steamboat to like tug everything along.

Speaker 1: Right, because they’re just pumping water into it so you have water there, but it’s not… it’s not like you have a current and it wants to be flowing that way and you know, it’s not taking you where you want to go.

So you have to do the work.

And again, you know, that’s why this one is kind of a big deal because, you know, they actually made it so you didn’t have to do all that work with the mules.

You can get on there and, you know, it’s kind of to an extent, not automated, but to an extent a little bit more efficient.

So this is actually such a success that the tolls on it actually pay for the loan that Illinois had to take, which was $6.4 million, by 1871.

Okay, so by the time they get to that point, I guess they paid off their bill and then they were like, “Hey, let’s upgrade this thing and get further into debt.” But you know, by the time they do that in 1871, it’s all paid off.

And as far as I can tell, that’s, you know, not usually how these projects go.

It ends up getting, you know…

Speaker 2: More and more in debt.

Speaker 1: Yeah, or the money gets paid off obviously, you know, by somebody in the government or whatever by the time it’s over.

But in this case, they took a loan and it was so successful that just the tolls paid for itself.

And there were some details on the canal actually in the Smithsonian magazine that were interesting.

They did an article on it and they said that on April 24th in 1848, that was the first cargo boat to arrive in Chicago by canal.

It was called the General Thornton and it hauled sugar from New Orleans through the city on its way to Buffalo.

So that was kind of like an interesting thing because it does end up being like the first trip through this thing is actually from New Orleans.

You know, I mean, that was the trip that they made and that’s what everybody was kind of gunning for the whole time.

So that ends up coming to fruition there in 1848.

In the first 10 years, 5.5 million bushels of wheat are transported through the canal, 26 million bushels of corn, and 27 million pounds of pork. 563 million board feet of lumber also went through the canal.

So those give you a little bit of a flavor…

Speaker 2: That’s a lot of stuff.

Speaker 1: Oh yeah, but it gives you a bit of a flavor for, you know, what they’re using it for.

But like I said, you know, that’s kind of what it is.

You’re using it to transport the goods and also, you know, we’re trying to build up this new territory they have and then of course the city itself and the things along the way.

As an example I found of it, you know, just how much of a business magnet this thing was, there was actually a company that moved its Reaper factory there from Virginia before it opened.

So like, you know, that’s just the perspective people had.

Like everybody knew how big of a deal this was.

This guy’s like, “I gotta get up there because this is where I’m going to start being able to sell my equipment and I’m going to be able to transport them right along this canal on this… you know, this is going to be the opening for my business.”

Speaker 2: He’s like, “You know what? I’m going there where they’re doing this new technology thing and I’m going to, you know, take over.”

Speaker 1: It’s where things are happening, you know what I mean? But the transportation is really like is the key to it because this… you’re turning this into just this central hub of transportation for the country.

You know, and so if you have a factory there, the theory is, you know, you can build your stuff and then you can transport it over such a wide area that, you know, it’s just going to be a better distribution process too.

Now, just a minute on the importance of this canal.

I mean, I know I’ve talked about a lot of it, but the broad perspective when you take a step back.

This is the first time connecting these two basins, the Mississippi and the Great Lakes.

I mean, it’s just it’s such a huge deal.

I mean, this never… this is not natural, it’s never happened.

Like you said, with with that Mud Lake, you kind of have like a connection, but it’s not like this is a stream where there’s like fish going through it.

It’s just kind of a temporary connection.

But the fact that man actually connected these two things, I thought is it’s a pretty amazing thing that has happened.

Unfortunately for Joliet’s dream, the Gulf of Mexico is, you know, I don’t know if you’ve looked at a map lately, but it’s on the wrong side of Mexico.

Speaker 2: And where they needed to go.

Speaker 1: So yeah, so I don’t… that part of it doesn’t actually come to fruition.

Speaker 2: All this work just to get back to the Atlantic.

Speaker 1: Yeah, you’re going to need a little bit of another thing going on there.

But so Joliet’s going to be leaving our story from here.

There is actually a thing they call the loop though, which is there’s actually now at this point there’s a water path that you can go all the way through the Great Lakes and come down the Mississippi and then go around Florida and go back up.

I think it’s some kind of thing for like rich guys with… want to spend a lot of money on a boat and say they did this.

I don’t know what really the goal is of it.

Speaker 2: Like sailing, “I sailed the Mississippi and sailed around.”

Speaker 1: Yeah, I said I didn’t dive too deeply into it, but it is interesting that’s a thing that people do.

But despite not fulfilling Joliet’s dream, you know, this actually was done.

So now we have an all-water route that’s completed from the Atlantic to New Orleans.

So like I said with what we discussed earlier with the Erie Canal having been built, that was by 1825, and then the completion of the I&M, you can get from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Mexico.

That’s why this was such a big deal to get this canal put in here.

It pretty much cements the inevitability of what Chicago becomes.

Like you said, you have this all-water path, so and here is the path.

I found a source that actually explains how you could actually make this happen.

So again, we’re not at the point where you just get in your, you know, your little boat and drive through, you know, from the Atlantic all the way down to Mississippi through the Mississippi.

But this source said that travelers from the eastern United States could take the Hudson to Albany and then the Erie Canal to Buffalo, where steamboats brought them through the Great Lakes to Chicago, and then canal boats brought them along the I&M to LaSalle-Peru.

Here people boarded river steamers bound for St.

Louis and New Orleans.

So that would be how you would take the trip at the time.

Now, the opening of this canal heralded a new era in trade and travel for the entire nation.

And they say thanks to this all-water route, freight could move from St.

Louis to New York in 12 days and at a much more cost-effective rate.

This is in comparison to the overland route, which would take 30 to 40 days.

Speaker 2: Well, and people probably also prefer this route, this water route.

It…

I would imagine it was a much shorter trip, much faster, and much, much more comfortable.

And it’s not like the carriages at the time had shocks and all the roads were full of rocks and mud and dust, so I can’t imagine that that was a pleasant ride going west in a carriage towards Chicago.

Speaker 1: Right, right.

You know, once railroad came along, that was the way to go, but…

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: Yeah, and then that’s actually what happens.

The canals are used for both transportation of people and goods until obviously Chicago becomes a huge railroad hub as well and then, you know, the passenger part probably kind of goes away and then, you know, it’s just for transporting goods and then everybody takes the trains because obviously trains are even better.

So but just to put a final note on the importance of this I&M because it was a big deal.

The Chicago… oh, the Encyclopedia of Chicago points out this direct link between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River.

It actually shifted the center of Midwestern trade from St.

Louis to Chicago.

So you always think like St.

Louis gateway to the west, but and you know, it’s the gateway, but now the road actually starts with Chicago.

Speaker 2: I’m sure St.

Louis was thrilled about this.

Speaker 1: I’m sure that anyone from St.

Louis totally disagrees with this in all… because it’s not like St.

Louis is suddenly, you know, a non-existent city.

It’s, you know, and this is the Encyclopedia of Chicago, though I find it to be a pretty good resource.

But yeah, obviously people in St.

Louis might want to, you know, differ on the exact wording there.

But you know, Chicago is still like an incredibly important city.

But this is obviously, you know, at the time it’s going to mark Chicago as the trading hub of the country.

Now, you have your I&M completed, so your all-water route is there.

And as I said, this goes hand in hand with the population surge.

And from 1850 to 1900, the population just explodes in the Chicago area.

The Encyclopedia of Chicago attributes it directly to it being a transportation hub.

They say while no one could call the flat prairie stretching westward from Lake Michigan dramatic, they placed no topographical obstacles to Chicago’s future as a rail and shipping center.

In its first 50 to 75 years, Chicago was almost perfectly placed between America’s industrializing Northeast and its farm frontier West.

It was also almost perfectly timed to take maximum advantage of railroads and steamships, which were the advanced transportation technology of that era.

Chicago’s explosive growth during industrialization has shaped metropolitan development down to the present.

Factories located across the area, taking advantage of the many transportation lines.

Chicago’s opportunities drew hundreds of thousands of newcomers from the great waves of European immigrants in the 19th and early 20th century.

So here are the actual numbers to tag on to that sentiment.

In Chicago in 1860, the population leapt to 109,000.

That is from 200 in 1833.

So 200 in 1833, 109,000 in 1860.

It was the youngest city in the United States with more than 100,000 people and one of only three in the Midwest, with St.

Louis and Cincinnati being the other two.

Now, by the 1880 census, they record 503,000 people.

Speaker 2: That’s an insane amount of people in a very short period of time.

Speaker 1: The jump is crazy.

Like I said in the beginning, you know, it’s obviously slow going, but once you get this canal in here and everybody starts moving into the area and the businesses just become this hub.

And actually by 1900, there’s over 1.6 million people in the city.

So that’s, you know, for our time frame, that’s going to be pretty much the progression there.

So in sum, despite its unprecedented rise and its enormity, Chicago was just inevitable.

You know, the two largest water basins in the country are there and they are huge.

They bump right up against one another and they do it in Chicago.

You know, they were then connected formally with the I&M, making it the transportation hub of the country.

It’s just the natural transportation hub of the country and the population follows.

Unfortunately, so does the waste.

And with that, we’re going to wrap it up for today.

So it’s time for the summation and Juliet’s takeaway.

Before I do that though, don’t forget that the sources used in this entry are all going to be located on the website at informatorium56.com.

Juliet, what do you have for your big takeaway today?

Speaker 2: I found it really interesting, you know, just how obsessed people were to getting to Asia and just, you know, we have to do all this to get there.

But then make all these other cool things like the canal.

That’s quite the feat for the time and just, you know, the human spirit.

Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, there’s a lot of challenges that come up and we’re going to deal with a lot more of those in in the next episode.

But it definitely is an indomitable spirit.

I had read a book a while back that talked about the difference between… it was written by a British writer and he was talking about the difference between how they do things in Britain and how they do them here.

And he just said it’s crazy some of the things that he was writing about some of the history of Chicago.

I read it a long time ago, but basically he just said, “You know, we wouldn’t be doing that here, we would just move on.” And here it’s just like, “No, we’ll make it happen.”

Good to go.

For the summation, today we covered the stories from exploration through the building of the all-water route that reached from the Atlantic to the Mississippi.

And because of that location, the geography of Chicago, you know, it was like I said, it was it was just inevitable.

From the time of the first European explorers when Joliet had designs on an all-water route right through to construction of that route coming to fruition.

With that and the incredibly and inextricably linked growth of the city comes the incidental problems and complications that come along with a huge city.

And how we deal with those, he said we will cover that in the next episode.

So that will do it.

If you would like to reach us at the show, you can.

The email is informatorium56@gmail.com.

Thank you so much for visiting us here at the Informatorium.

We wish you a happy, healthy, and beautiful journey until we see you again.

Look on the bright side and good luck.

Speaker 2: Bye.