The Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal

In last month’s blog, I spoke about the construction of the Illinois and Michigan Canal and its tremendous importance to not only the Chicago area and Illinois, but to the opening to settlement of the entire United States west of the Eastern States. If you missed that article, you can read it here: 

https://www.patcamallierebooks.com/2023/07/illinois-and-michigan-canal-celebrates-175th-anniversary/.

After the canal opened, Lemont was not through with building canals. As early as 1862 engineers recognized that low water level in the canal and pollution from the Chicago River were causing problems. Homes, farms, the stockyards, and other industries dumped waste into the Chicago River. Stagnant water in the canal emitted a foul odor and disease, especially fear of cholera, became of great concern. In addition, the canal was dependent upon the level of water in the Chicago River and surface water runoff to keep it navigable.

At that time, the Chicago River flowed into Lake Michigan and carried unsanitary sewage and filth not only into the I&M Canal but into Chicago’s Lake Michigan water supply. This was not good.

Reengineering was stalled, at first due to the Civil War, then by attempts that failed to correct the problems. In 1885 heavy rainfall carried sewage and storm water into the lake and caused a major typhoid epidemic.

But something had to be done. A better canal was needed. The Chicago Sanitary District was created in 1889 to solve the problem.

The proposed solution was extensive and revolutionary: move the Des Plaines River to the north side of the valley and dig a deeper channel in the old riverbed, routing the Chicago River into a new canal with a system of locks to the Des Plaines River at Lockport. This would reverse the flow of the Chicago River from east into Lake Michigan, to west into the canal.

And the canal was huge. It ran 28 miles from Chicago to Lockport, averaging 150 feet wide and 22 feet deep. It took 8500 men and an assortment of newly designed machines to remove 29 million cubic yards of soil and 12 million cubic yards of rock. In comparison, the I & M Canal was 60 wide and 6 feet deep, and the Suez Canal is 82 feet wide. The machines and techniques developed to construct the Sanitary Canal were used to train people who constructed the Panama Canal some years later.

Designing the new canal occurred at the same time as Chicago’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, and the country, indeed the world, was in the midst of an age of technology; the automobile had been invented but was not yet in general use.

On September 3, 1892, construction began. The portion of the Sanitary Ship Canal through Lemont was especially challenging, as it ran through a rock base. Earlier canals, such as the Suez, had been cut through sand or earth. But Lemont, with its experienced quarry workers, was up to the task. Years of quarrying in the area had changed the technology from work done by hand to the development of such machinery as steam shovels, conveyors, grading machines, and every known apparatus for excavating and removing rock.

Lemont’s experience not only made the construction of the Sanitary Ship Canal possible, but its updated machinery and techniques were later used to build the Panama Canal that followed in 1904 and was finished ten years later. The equipment, adapted from quarry operations but newly designed for this project, was remarkable, including a grading machine pulled by 16 horses, fifty steam shovels, and a dredge 23 feet wide and 50 feet long. The picture below shows the capacity of a large crane basket, in this case filled with tourists rather than stone. The dog is a nice touch.

Nothing like this had ever been done. So massive was the project that it was jokingly referred to as the “Chicago School of Earth Moving.”

The project was such a remarkable event that it attracted tourists. The Chicago and Alton Railroad published a brochure and ran excursion trains to the site to witness a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see “…the most stupendous and miraculous example of canal construction and channeling which the word has ever known…” People on the tour were encouraged to get off at any of six train stops, walk around the sites and machinery, and bargain for fossils, which were plentiful in the exposed stone walls.

The Lemont section of the canal was finished about 1896, and the canal opened on January 2, 1900. The terminus is Bear Trap Dam, now called the Lockport Dam, which regulates the flow of the canal into the Des Plaines River. It is the only shipping link between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River, and is still in continuous operation today, moving millions of tons of iron ore, grain, and other cargo totaling more thatn$1.5 billion annually.

My blog in March told an amusing story about Admiral Dewey and the Battle of the Sanitary Canal. If you missed it, you can read it here:

https://www.patcamallierebooks.com/2023/03/admiral-dewey-and-the-battle-of-the-sanitary-canal/

The I & M Canal did not officially close until 1933. Today remnants of it remain. Lemont has well developed walking and biking trails extending from its historical downtown area both east and west along the canal, which also travel past picturesque old quarries.

The entire length of the old canal was designated in 1984 as the nation’s first National Heritage Corridor. The canal and towpath have been improved to support trails and activities in towns along the length of the canal. This year the canal celebrates its 175^th anniversary. It’s a great summer to visit. You can get further information here:

www.iandmcanal.org.

The Miracle at Assisi Hill My new release is now available at Smokey Row Antiques in downtown Lemont, Centuries and Sleuths in Forest Park, and Andersons Bookshops (Downers Grove only). As with my other books, you can also get all my books at Amazon.com, in paperback, hardcover, and Kindle. Ebooks are also available as Kindle unlimited. Here’s the Amazon link:  https://www.amazon.com/Books-Pat-Camalliere/s?rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3APat+Camalliere