Lemont Waterways – The I & M Canal

Posted on May 6, 2015 by Pat Camalliere
Look closely – this isn’t what it seems! Keep reading… (Photo courtesy of Sanitary District of Chicago)

Look closely – this isn’t what it seems! Keep reading… (Photo courtesy of Sanitary District of Chicago)

Following a smattering of frontiersmen, explorers, and fur traders who moved through the area, early non-native settlers were predominantly farmers and tradesmen who settled here after the War of 1812 until the early 1830s. The construction of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, which began when the first shovel of dirt was removed symbolically on July 4, 1836, caused tremendous changes in Lemont. With the sudden availability of jobs for canal workers, immigrants flocked to the area.

Before construction could begin, roads were needed to transport construction supplies. The first road to be laid out, between Chicago to Lockport, was Archer Avenue. It followed an Indian trail, developed from what probably was originally a deer path, and was named for Colonel William Archer, one of the canal commissioners. It cost $40,000 to build, and this created somewhat of a scandal at the time, since Colonel Archer was not only a canal commissioner, but had extensive property in Lockport and would clearly benefit personally from the road. It would seem that the patronage system in the area got an early start.

Be that as it may, the road was important not only to the canal, but to the settlers, who needed road transport to get their produce to market; they competed for land close to the crucial roadway, as completion of the waterway was still long off. As a result of proximity to Archer Avenue, Lemont farmers did quite well, due to the demand for food to supply the canal workers.

The canal was to run 96 miles, from the Chicago River at Bridgeport to the Illinois River at LaSalle.  It was to be 60 feet wide and 6 feet deep, and drop a total of 140 feet from Lake Michigan to the Illinois River, requiring 17 locks and 4 aqueducts.

Surely you’re familiar with locks, but aqueducts? You probably know aqueducts carry water from one location to another. But did you ever think about what happens when a canal meets another body of water? A body that might carry its water off in an entirely different direction? The photo above shows a solution, in this case, a wooden aqueduct, or water bridge, that carried the I&M Canal over Aux Sable Creek east of Morris, Illinois. There were four like this along the I&M.

Towpaths were laid out along the sides of canals so that mules could pull barges the length of the canal. Towns were located at intervals the mules could traverse, as rest stops, with barns to change the animals, and perhaps a saloon or two. Initially not only merchandise and supplies rode down the canal, but also passenger travel via barges was popular, until railroads, developed alongside the same route, opened in 1853.

You can probably guess that, although the canal greatly affected transportation, those mules didn’t set any speed records. The average rate of travel was about three miles an hour, providing there was sufficient water in the canal and it wasn’t frozen. Passengers, tired of sitting for long periods, often got out to stretch their legs and walked along the towpaths with the mules. Others just relaxed from the long hard hours of everyday life and watched the peaceful scenery pass slowly before their eyes.

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Lemont Waterways: The River – How it Got Its Name

Posted on April 29, 2015 by Pat Camalliere
This is a view of the Des Plaines River taken in August 2015, when the water was low. Note the calm ripples and vegetation mid-river. Note the shallow banks. Imagine how this same spot would look with the river at flood stage and how much of the surrounding area would be covered.
This is a view of the Des Plaines River taken in August 2015, when the water was low. Note the calm ripples and vegetation mid-river. Note the shallow banks. Imagine how this same spot would look with the river at flood stage and how much of the surrounding area would be covered.

Native Americans called the Des Plaines River She-shick-ma-wish-sip-pe, or “soft maple tree river.” I for one am glad that name didn’t stick. Most of the earliest non-native explorers spoke French, and historians propose the river was named after the plaine tree, a type of maple which lined the banks of the river. I would suggest another possibility, based on the experience of our old friend Father Marquette. I use the word “old” meaning that we are long familiar with him, not that he was aged, as he died just shy of his 38th birthday, on May 18, 1675, not long after the experience below.

Father Marquette well knew the river’s reputation for overflowing its banks, and in 1675 recorded this experience:

“On the 28th (March 28, 1675) the ice broke up, and stopped above us. On the 29th, the waters rose so high that we had barely time to decamp as fast as possible, putting our goods in the trees, and trying to sleep on a hillock. The water gained on us nearly all night, but there was a slight freeze, and the water fell a little, while we were near our packages. The barrier has just broken, the ice has drifted away; and, because the water is already rising, we are about to embark to continue our journey… (March 31). The very high lands alone are not flooded. At the place where we are, the water has risen more than twelve feet.”

A French word for “high water” is “plein”. I don’t know about you, but I like this story better than a “plaine” old maple tree, as it gives the river credit for its troublesome behavior. Take your pick.

Before we leave the river and move on to the I&M Canal next week, I wonder if there are a few of you who still remember the days before refrigeration was generally available and our kitchens depended on ice boxes. I lived on the south side of Chicago as a child, and I can remember when “the ice man cometh” for his weekly visit to the few homes that still needed ice. The children would flock around his truck begging for chunks of ice to nibble, and he usually obliged. I had no clue then where the ice came from, but I bet you know what I’m going to say – yep, it was local rivers, and perhaps most abundantly from the Des Plaines, particularly a few miles upstream from Lemont near Willow Springs. Huge blocks were cut from the frozen river, weighing about eighty pounds, layered with straw and stored in warehouses near the river banks until needed in summer months. I suppose the river was cleaner in those days, but I still wonder how we survived nibbling on those chunks of ice.

One might also note that, despite our complaints about the miserable winter we had this year, the river did not freeze solid, as it regularly did a hundred years ago. How much more miserable were our grandparents and great grandparents? But if one listened to our weathermen the winter of 2014–15 was one for the record books.

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Lemont Waterways – The River

Posted on April 22, 2015 by Pat Camalliere

Correction: In last week’s article, in my desire to point out the reason the golf course and Argonne laboratory could not exist side by side, I inappropriately referred to Argonne as a “secret atomic bomb complex”. This shortcut to making a point resulted in an inaccurate statement, as I should have explained that the experiments done at this site were to set up and build a nuclear reactor and create a sustained and controllable nuclear reaction. The use of that research to create a nuclear bomb was done at Los Alamos and Oak Ridge, not at Argonne. Argonne is a highly respected facility and good neighbor, and has always been devoted to the peaceful uses of energy, of which nuclear energy is only one source.

Lemont Waterways – The River

This picture of the Des Plaines River was taken by me in the fall of 2014. I selected this photo so you can see the hillocks, calm flow, and low banks of the river at this time of year, compared to how the river would appear after heavy rain.

This picture of the Des Plaines River was taken by me in the fall of 2014. I selected this photo so you can see the hillocks, calm flow, and low banks of the river at this time of year, compared to how the river would appear after heavy rain.

I get excited when I talk about the Lemont waterways, because they are so important to the growth of the entire Midwest, and the only place they all come together is Lemont. They started here, as a glimmer in the mind of Father Jacques Marquette in 1674, and today the junction that finally made his ideas work is in Lemont.

Scores of books, or more, have been written about the canals, and I’m not going to repeat all that here, but I do want to share some of the excitement and interesting facts.

Before the canals there was the river, the Des Plaines River, running through the Des Plaines River Valley, and creating bluffs that are unique to the Chicago area, as well as the only canyon in Cook County, Sagawau Canyon off Route 83 near Route 171. Native Americans made their villages along the river, notably the Potawatomi, the predominant tribe when the first white men came to the area.

Potawatomi and other Native American tribes depended on rivers not only for food and water, but as the primary way of getting quickly from one place to another, by canoe. Although trails, developed along deer paths for the most part, existed, these were not as convenient nor as fast as rivers and streams. The Des Plaines River was heavily traveled, as it connected south and west to the Illinois River, flowing into the Mississippi and to the Gulf of Mexico, and north and east it connected, after only a short portage (short land area between two waterways) to the Chicago River, then to Lake Michigan, to the Saint Lawrence River, and the Atlantic Ocean.

This was not a perfect system. The Des Plaines River was greatly affected by seasonal, climatic, and weather changes. In the spring or during heavy rains, the river rose up to twenty feet, flooded its banks and became a raging torrent that was difficult to navigate. In the summer it dried up to the point that it became unnavigable swampland, full of mosquitoes and disease. In the winter it froze with treacherous mushy spots, making it unfit for either canoe or foot travel. Despite that, the natives learned the moods of the river and how to profit from them.

When Father Marquette explored this area in 1674, he is said to have stayed at or near what is today Saint James at Sag Bridge Catholic Church, off Route 171 near Route 83. Can you picture him, standing on a bluff overlooking both the Des Plaines River Valley and the Sag Valley, having been shown by local Indians the portage between the Chicago River and the Des Plaines, and conceiving of an idea to build a canal to create a water route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico?

Father Marquette’s idea refused to die, but it was not until 1822 that the federal government finally set aside land for the creation of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, which would link the Mississippi River to Lake Michigan, and not until 1836 that sufficient funds were found to break ground. Lemont would become a major player in its construction.

As canal construction began, the population of Chicago mushroomed from 350 to about 2000 in anticipation of an expected boom. Lemont’s population was similar, in anticipation of a need for canal workers.

To be continued …

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The Lost Golf Course of Sag

Posted on April 15, 2015 by Pat Camalliere
Palos Golf Club ca 1920s. Photo courtesy Lemont Area Historic Society

Palos Golf Club ca 1920s. Photo courtesy Lemont Area Historic Society

In an earlier post about Al Capone’s connections with Lemont, I mentioned a lost golf course. There has been a lot of recent interest in this topic, so I’m going to tell you more about it.

The photo on the right above is the clubhouse of the Palos Golf Club. As you can see, it is no little outpost, but a building that would interest someone like Al Capone as a hangout, since it was in an isolated area and provided comfortable amenities to someone with expensive tastes.

The land, farmland which had been cleared of forest by early settlers, was purchased by the Cook County Forest Preserve in 1918, and 10 holes were opened in 1921. An exhibition match was played there in 1924 by Chick Evans, who was defeated by Jock Hutchinson. In 1925 or 1926 it was opened as an 18-hole course, and it hosted the United Golf Association Open, the USGA Amateur, and the Women’s Amateur championships in 1940. The entrance was off 107th Street across from Saganashkee Slough, an unincorporated area where Sag Bridge (now part of Lemont), Palos Park, and Palos Hills meet.

The course was listed by the USGA as Palos Park Golf Course, as an 18-hole, 6220-yard, par 70 course, described as hilly (an understatement!), with one water hazard, seeded greens, and dirt tees. Charles (Chick) Evans set the amateur record of 71 there in 1921. Green fees at the time were 50 cents on weekdays (75 cents for all day). Caddies were available for 75 cents. The course was popular in its day, unseen from the road, and carved into the side of a hill, which prompted golfers to say it was a great course for players who had one leg shorter than the other.

The course was closed in late 1941 or early 1942, when the Manhattan Project Atomic Pile No. 2 was moved from Stagg Field at the University of Chicago to Red Gate Woods and the newly-constructed Argonne National Laboratory. Obviously, the top-secret atomic bomb complex and public golf course could not exist side by side. It is clear from looking at both photos above that reforestation of the area, converted from farmland, would have been far from mature, and that the secret complex would have been easily seen across areas of open land. Another aerial photo is said to exist that shows the course, with Argonne’s reactor complex whited out in the photo.

You may be wondering what kind of golfer Al Capone was. According to his caddie, he was terrible, but he loved the game. He relates that a slew of bodyguards followed Al around the course. “He could drive the ball half a mile, but he always hooked it, and he couldn’t putt for beans.” Al was kind and generous to his caddie, who on occasion dropped a ball from his pocket near where Al’s ball disappeared and pretended to find it. He also tells a story about how Al shot himself in the foot one day when he was lifting his golf bag and a revolver inside went off. If you have interest, refer to this article that was written in November 1972: http://www.golf.com/tour-and-news/al-capones-caddie-talks-about-working-chicagos-most-famous-gangster.

Other golf courses in Lemont have survived since opening in the 1920s, notably Cog Hill’s four courses and Gleneagles two courses, but today both the original site of Argonne and the golf course are gone, and the land has been reclaimed by forest. Some people claim they have been able to find suggestions of the old bunker formations and signs of the foundation of the clubhouse, others that there is little there but leaves. Nuclear waste from the Manhattan Project has been buried in a clearing in the woods, designated by a marker near one of the many Forest Preserve trails that traverse the area today.

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Sag Bridge – Gone Town

Posted on April 8, 2015 by Pat Camalliere
1910 Photo of farmland where the Cal-Sag Channel now is. The town of Sag Bridge is behind the buildings in the background on the left. On the right the land can be seen to rise, and Saint James Church is on that bluff. Photo courtesy Sanitary District of Chicago.

1910 Photo of farmland where the Cal-Sag Channel now is. The town of Sag Bridge is behind the buildings in the background on the left. On the right the land can be seen to rise, and Saint James Church is on that bluff. Photo courtesy Sanitary District of Chicago.

Sag Bridge is now part of the Village of Lemont, but at one time it was a village in its own right. It boasted a hotel and it had its own post office, a number of businesses, a railroad station, a stop on the electric line between Chicago and Joliet, and a port on the I&M canal. Joshua Bell, who came to Sag Bridge in the 1830s, was the postmaster and owner of the hotel. Although the town soon found it too expensive to continue as a village, it had a school district composed of one of the last one-room schoolhouses in the state, which did not close until 1961. The center of the “town” was roughly where Archer Avenue (Route 171) and Bell Road intersect today.

When the glaciers retreated from Northern Illinois, prehistoric Lake Chicago remained, which eventually receded leaving Lake Michigan. As it receded, it left two valleys, the Des Plaines River Valley and the Sag Valley, on either side of an elevated triangle of land called Mount Forest Island. Sag Bridge was located on the south side of the Sag Valley, and the historic Saint James at Sag Bridge, the oldest continuously-operating Catholic Church in Cook County, was built on the north bluff, in the forests at the western edge of Mount Forest Island. The cornerstone of the church was laid in 1853, but it took six years for the men of the parish to dig stone from a nearby quarry and haul it up the bluff to complete the building.

Before permanent settlement, Mount Forest Island had been inhabited by Native Americans, who valued the land for its vantage point and strategic location. Saint James is said to have been built on the site of an Indian village, possibly an Indian graveyard, and later a French fort. Father Marquette and Louis Joliet stopped there during their exploration.

Many immigrants to Sag Bridge came from Ireland to find jobs digging the I&M canal in the 1840s, and when the canal was finished they stayed to farm or work in the local quarries. In the 1890s the sanitary canal, the waterway that reversed the flow of the Chicago River, brought more Irish to Sag Bridge and Lemont, as well as the Bridgeport neighborhood of Chicago. The colorful history includes many prizefights that were held in Sag Bridge around the turn of the 19th century. The fights were staged there because “the Sag” was easily accessible by canal barge from Bridgeport.

What does “Sag” mean, and what was the bridge? The answers are speculative, just as the history is murky. The term Sag probably derived from a Potawatomi Indian word, Saginaw, which may have meant “swamp”. The Sag Valley was a low-lying swampy area, and it is presumed that a bridge may have provided transport across it. The name could also refer to the geographic coming together of the two valleys. When one considers that recorded history relates that the first white settlers to arrive in the area came in 1833, and that the oldest grave at Saint James Cemetery is that of Michael Dillon, buried in 1816, further fuel is added to doubts about the accuracy of the history.

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Lemont and the Capones

Posted on April 1, 2015 by Pat Camalliere
Saloon at Smokey Row ca. 1900. Photo courtesy Lemont Area Historical Society

Saloon at Smokey Row ca. 1900. Photo courtesy Lemont Area Historical Society

Lemont and the Capones

Okay, so this picture isn’t the Capones, but this early Lemont saloon does show you what taverns were like in the early 1900s. Note that there are no stools, and men gathered at the bar or around the stove. It was also common to allow children in saloons, although it wasn’t likely they were served.

Many Chicagoland suburbs claim ties of various kinds to Al Capone, and Lemont is no exception. There are a number of credible reasons that make it likely he had some attachment to Lemont.

Al’s brother, Ralph (Bottles) Capone, had a business in Lemont for many years. A major business for the Capones was the distribution of illegal alcohol, which of course needed to be bottled, and profits were greater if their own “business” provided the bottles. Wold Beverages in Lemont manufactured bottles for local distribution of “Wold’s Wonder Water”, a soft drink, and Ralph’s granddaughter, Deirdre Marie Capone, remembers the bottle manufacturing company in Lemont. It stands to reason that Al would have spent some time with his brother and possibly that he financed and controlled the business to some extent, although this is conjecture.

Al was an avid golfer (but terrible, per his caddy). In the forest preserves along 107th Street between Archer and Kean Avenues there was once a golf course, built in 1921 and managed by the Cook County Forest Preserves. It was know by a number of names, most commonly as Palos Golf Club, and is one of the courses Al played. The course was located in a geographic area called Mount Forest Island, which in prehistoric times was an island in Lake Chicago, before the water receded, leaving Lake Michigan. One approached the golf course from 107th Street, across from Saganashkee Slough.

The course was popular in its day, secluded back in the woods, unseen from the road, and carved into the side of a hill, which prompted golfers to say it was a great course for players who had one leg shorter than the other. It had a large, attractive clubhouse, which was said to be one of Al’s “hideouts”, or at least a meeting place to discuss business with some expectation of privacy.

Today the course is forgotten, because its closing was shrouded in secrecy. During World War II, when at the University of Chicago, U.S. scientists were racing German scientists to produce the atomic bomb. The Manhattan Project was moved from Chicago to this secluded area, adjacent to the golf course. The project was, of course, top secret, so the golf course was closed, demolished, entrances to the area secured, and any mention of its very existence discouraged. It is hard to find anyone who remembers it.

“Suburban” legend has it that Al Capone also had a home along Bluff Road on the outskirts of Lemont. Deirdre Capone denies that Al ever had a home in Lemont, however, she does remember Al and Ralph golfing in Lemont. She also shares that he was fond of the toboggan slides at Swallow Cliff, which have since been demolished, leaving only a sledding hill and steps popular today for exercise. She used to accompany them on these trips, and also to other places they frequented in Lemont, but cannot remember the other names.

Deirdre has written a book about her famous family and what it was like growing up as a Capone, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Her book is titled Uncle Al Capone, and you can also visit her web site at www.unclealcapone.com.

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Lemont – What’s in a name?

Posted on October 17, 2014 by Pat Camalliere
Lemont ca early 1900s (Photo courtesy of Lemont Historical Society)
Lemont ca early 1900s (Photo courtesy of Lemont Historical Society)

My novel, Mystery at Sag Bridge is set in the town of Lemont, a suburb about twenty-five miles southwest of downtown Chicago, Illinois. Future blogs will delve into interesting facts and rants about the wonders of Lemont, but today I’d like to tell you how it was named.

Potawatomi tribes inhabited the Lemont area prior to the 1830s, at which time white settlers largely from eastern states came to the wilderness for a better place to live and more opportunities for their families. The area grew due to construction of a canal—the I & M (Illinois and Michigan)—that would link Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River, thus providing waterway transport from east coast ports to the Gulf of Mexico. The canal ran through the future Lemont, and Archer Avenue was constructed along an old Indian trail to transport construction supplies. Towns grew up along Archer, including Sag Bridge in 1838 (now incorporated into Lemont) and Athens in 1839 (previous name of Lemont).

Prior to 1840 three subdivisions made up what came to be known as Lemont: Athens, Keepataw, and Des Plaines (no relationship to the suburb of Des Plaines northwest of Chicago). In 1840 a post office was established, officially named Keepataw, whereas the canal stop was called Athens. There was also a town named Athens in Southern Illinois…all of this was confusing for postal workers, so Athens had to be renamed.

In those days, the country was experiencing a fascination with classical names. In addition to Athens, nearby towns were named Rome (later Romeo) and Juliet. It is interesting that Romeo and Juliet were once neighboring towns. It is also interesting that, although most people think Joliet, Illinois was named for the explorer Louis Joliett, the name came later. It was originally named Juliet just because that was the name the first settlers used.

In choosing a name for Lemont, the naming committee rejected Keepataw because they felt the name made the town sound uncivilized. They considered Palmyra, but decided that was as confusing as Athens. Finally, Lemuel Brown, a leading citizen on the committee, suggested Lemont. The assumption was that the name was chosen as a corruption of La Mont, French for “the mountain”, in reference to the limestone bluffs and hills on which the town was built. However, some historians insist Lemuel named it for himself, taking the first three letters of his name and adding “-ont” to it.

As a writer, I too had difficulty deciding whether to use the real name, Lemont, or create a fictional suburb in which to set The Mystery at Sag Bridge. I wanted the leeway to fictionalize as needed—I did not want the story compromised by limitations of historical accuracy (although much of it is accurate!).

As with the original residents, I started by naming my town Athens, but ultimately decided, as they did, that it was too confusing. Next I renamed my town New Athens, only to find that such a town also already exists in Illinois. I considered, as the original residents did, many of the same names they considered: Keepataw, Hastings, Emmettsburg, Haytown, Corktown, Des Plaines, and a close variant, LaMont. Ultimately I stuck out my chin and just went with the real town name. I never considered changing the name of Sag Bridge. It was just too good a name, and I had to keep it!

 

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