Illinois
Illinois is a state in the Midwestern and Great Lakes region of the United States. It has the fifth largest gross domestic product, the sixth largest population, the 25th largest land area of all U. S. states. Illinois is noted as a microcosm of the entire United States. With Chicago in northeastern Illinois, small industrial cities and immense agricultural productivity in the north and center of the state, natural resources such as coal and petroleum in the south, Illinois has a diverse economic base, is a major transportation hub. Chicagoland, Chicago's metropolitan area, encompasses over 65% of the state's population; the Port of Chicago connects the state to international ports via two main routes: from the Great Lakes, via the Saint Lawrence Seaway, to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River, via the Illinois Waterway to the Illinois River. The Mississippi River, the Ohio River, the Wabash River form parts of the boundaries of Illinois. For decades, Chicago's O'Hare International Airport has been ranked as one of the world's busiest airports.
Illinois has long had a reputation as a bellwether both in social and cultural terms and, through the 1980s, in politics. The capital of Illinois is Springfield, located in the central part of the state. Although today's Illinois' largest population center is in its northeast, the state's European population grew first in the west as the French settled the vast Mississippi of the Illinois Country of New France. Following the American Revolutionary War, American settlers began arriving from Kentucky in the 1780s via the Ohio River, the population grew from south to north. In 1818, Illinois achieved statehood. Following increased commercial activity in the Great Lakes after the construction of the Erie Canal, Chicago was founded in the 1830s on the banks of the Chicago River at one of the few natural harbors on the southern section of Lake Michigan. John Deere's invention of the self-scouring steel plow turned Illinois's rich prairie into some of the world's most productive and valuable farmland, attracting immigrant farmers from Germany and Sweden.
The Illinois and Michigan Canal made transportation between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River valley faster and cheaper, new railroads carried immigrants to new homes in the country's west and shipped commodity crops to the nation's east. The state became a transportation hub for the nation. By 1900, the growth of industrial jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Illinois was an important manufacturing center during both world wars; the Great Migration from the South established a large community of African Americans in the state, including Chicago, who founded the city's famous jazz and blues cultures. Chicago, the center of the Chicago Metropolitan Area, is now recognized as a global alpha-level city. Three U. S. presidents have been elected while living in Illinois: Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Barack Obama. Additionally, Ronald Reagan, whose political career was based in California, was born and raised in the state.
Today, Illinois honors Lincoln with its official state slogan Land of Lincoln, displayed on its license plates since 1954. The state is the site of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield and the future home of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. "Illinois" is the modern spelling for the early French Catholic missionaries and explorers' name for the Illinois Native Americans, a name, spelled in many different ways in the early records. American scholars thought the name "Illinois" meant "man" or "men" in the Miami-Illinois language, with the original iliniwek transformed via French into Illinois; this etymology is not supported by the Illinois language, as the word for "man" is ireniwa, plural of "man" is ireniwaki. The name Illiniwek has been said to mean "tribe of superior men", a false etymology; the name "Illinois" derives from the Miami-Illinois verb irenwe·wa - "he speaks the regular way". This was taken into the Ojibwe language in the Ottawa dialect, modified into ilinwe·.
The French borrowed these forms, changing the /we/ ending to spell it as -ois, a transliteration for its pronunciation in French of that time. The current spelling form, began to appear in the early 1670s, when French colonists had settled in the western area; the Illinois's name for themselves, as attested in all three of the French missionary-period dictionaries of Illinois, was Inoka, of unknown meaning and unrelated to the other terms. American Indians of successive cultures lived along the waterways of the Illinois area for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans; the Koster Site demonstrates 7,000 years of continuous habitation. Cahokia, the largest regional chiefdom and urban center of the Pre-Columbian Mississippian culture, was located near present-day Collinsville, Illinois, they built an urban complex of more than 100 platform and burial mounds, a 50-acre plaza larger than 35 football fields, a woodhenge of sacred cedar, all in a planned design expressing the culture's cosmology.
Monks Mound, the center of the site, is the largest Pre-Columbian structure north of the Valley of Mexico. It is 100 feet high, 951 feet long, 836 feet wide, covers 13.8 acres. It contains about 814,000 cubic yards of earth, it was topped by a structure thought to have measured about 105 feet in length and 48 feet in width, covered an area 5,000 square feet, been as much as 50 feet high, making its peak 150 feet above the level of the pl
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans known as American Indians, Indigenous Americans and other terms, are the indigenous peoples of the United States, except Hawaii. There are over 500 federally recognized tribes within the US, about half of which are associated with Indian reservations; the term "American Indian" excludes Native Hawaiians and some Alaska Natives, while Native Americans are American Indians, plus Alaska Natives of all ethnicities. Native Hawaiians are not counted as Native Americans by the US Census, instead being included in the Census grouping of "Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander"; the ancestors of modern Native Americans arrived in what is now the United States at least 15,000 years ago much earlier, from Asia via Beringia. A vast variety of peoples and cultures subsequently developed. Native Americans were affected by the European colonization of the Americas, which began in 1492, their population declined precipitously due to introduced diseases as well as warfare, territorial confiscation and slavery.
After the founding of the United States, many Native American peoples were subjected to warfare and one-sided treaties, they continued to suffer from discriminatory government policies into the 20th century. Since the 1960s, Native American self-determination movements have resulted in changes to the lives of Native Americans, though there are still many contemporary issues faced by Native Americans. Today, there are over five million Native Americans in the United States, 78% of whom live outside reservations; when the United States was created, established Native American tribes were considered semi-independent nations, as they lived in communities separate from British settlers. The federal government signed treaties at a government-to-government level until the Indian Appropriations Act of 1871 ended recognition of independent native nations, started treating them as "domestic dependent nations" subject to federal law; this law did preserve the rights and privileges agreed to under the treaties, including a large degree of tribal sovereignty.
For this reason, many Native American reservations are still independent of state law and actions of tribal citizens on these reservations are subject only to tribal courts and federal law. The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 granted U. S. citizenship to all Native Americans born in the United States. This emptied the "Indians not taxed" category established by the United States Constitution, allowed natives to vote in state and federal elections, extended the Fourteenth Amendment protections granted to people "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States. However, some states continued to deny Native Americans voting rights for several decades. Bill of Rights protections do not apply to tribal governments, except for those mandated by the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968. Since the end of the 15th century, the migration of Europeans to the Americas has led to centuries of population and agricultural transfer and adjustment between Old and New World societies, a process known as the Columbian exchange.
As most Native American groups had preserved their histories by oral traditions and artwork, the first written sources of the conflict were written by Europeans. Ethnographers classify the indigenous peoples of North America into ten geographical regions with shared cultural traits, called cultural areas; some scholars combine the Plateau and Great Basin regions into the Intermontane West, some separate Prairie peoples from Great Plains peoples, while some separate Great Lakes tribes from the Northeastern Woodlands. The ten cultural areas are as follows: Arctic, including Aleut and Yupik peoples Subarctic Northeastern Woodlands Southeastern Woodlands Great Plains Great Basin Northwest Plateau Northwest Coast California Southwest At the time of the first contact, the indigenous cultures were quite different from those of the proto-industrial and Christian immigrants; some Northeastern and Southwestern cultures, in particular, were matrilineal and operated on a more collective basis than that with which Europeans were familiar.
The majority of Indigenous American tribes maintained their hunting grounds and agricultural lands for use of the entire tribe. Europeans at that time had patriarchal cultures and had developed concepts of individual property rights with respect to land that were different; the differences in cultures between the established Native Americans and immigrant Europeans, as well as shifting alliances among different nations in times of war, caused extensive political tension, ethnic violence, social disruption. Before the European settlement of what is now the United States, Native Americans suffered high fatalities from contact with new European diseases, to which they had not yet acquired immunity. Smallpox epidemics are thought to have caused the greatest loss of life for indigenous populations. William M Denevan, noted author and Professor Emeritus of Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said on this subject in his essay "The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1492".
Old World diseases were the primary killer. In many regions the tropical lowlands, populations fell by 90 percent or more in the first century after the contact. "Estimates of the pre-Columbian population of what today constitutes the U. S. vary ranging from William M Denevan's 3.8 million in his 1992 w
Ice jam
Ice jams occur on rivers when floating ice accumulates at a natural or man-made feature that impedes its progress downstream. Ice jams can reduce the flow of a river and cause upstream flooding—sometimes called ice dams. Ice jam flooding can occur downstream when the jam releases in an outburst flood. In either case, flooding can cause damage to structures on shore. An ice blockage on a river is called an ice jam, but sometimes an ice dam. An ice jam is an obstruction on a river formed by blocks of ice. Defined by the International Association of Hydraulic Research Working Group on River Ice Hydraulics an ice jam is a "stationary accumulation of fragmented ice or frazil that restricts flow" on a river or stream; the jam may create a dam with an accumulation of anchor ice on the bottom of the river. On rivers the obstruction may be a change of width, bend or decrease in gradient. Ice jam floods are less predictable and more destructive than open-water flooding and can produce much deeper and faster flooding.
Ice jam floods may occur during freezing weather, may leave large pieces of ice behind, but they are much more localized than open-water floods. Ice jams damage an economy by causing river-side industrial facilities such as hydro-electric generating stations to shut down and to interfere with ship transport; the United States averages 125 million dollars in losses to ice jams per year. Ice jams on rivers occur in the springtime as the river ice begins to break up, but may occur in early winter during freeze-up; the break-up process is described in three phases: break-up and final drive. Pre-break-up begins with increased springtime river flow, water level, temperatures fracturing the river ice and separating it from the shore. Changes in river height from dam releases may affect the pre-break-up. During the break-up, the ice in areas of rapids is carried downstream as an ice floe and may jam on still frozen sections of ice on calm water or against structures in the river such as the Honeymoon Bridge, destroyed in 1938 by an ice jam.
Smaller jams may flow downstream and form a larger jam. During the final drive, a large jam will dislodge and take out the remaining jams, clearing the river of ice in a matter of hours. Ice jams occur in spring, but they can happen as winter sets in when the downstream part becomes frozen first. Freeze-up jams may be larger because the ice is stronger and temperatures are continuing to cool unlike a spring break-up when the environment is warming, but are less to release water. Three types of natural ice jams can occur: a surface jam, a single layer of ice in a floe on calm water. Ice jams occur at sharp bends in the river, at man-made objects such as bridge piers, at confluences. In the northern hemisphere, northerly flowing rivers tend to have more ice jams because the upper, more southerly reaches thaw first and the ice gets carried downstream into the still-frozen northerly part. There are three physical hazards of ice jams; the ice floe can form a dam. This occurred during the 2009 Alaska floods.
As the ice jam breaks apart, a sudden surge of water breaking through can flood areas downstream of the jam. The third hazard is that the ice buildup and final drive may damage structures in or near the river and boats in the river. Ice jams may scour the river bed, causing damage or benefit to wildlife habitats and damage to structures in the river. Early warnings of an ice jam include using trained observers to monitor break-up conditions and ice motion detectors; the prevention of ice jams may be accomplished by weakening the ice before the break-up by cutting or drilling holes in the ice. However, the movement of migratory fish is known to be related to freeze-up and break-up, so affecting ice break-up may affect fish migration. Where floods threaten human habitation, the blockage may be artificially cleared. Ice blasting using dynamite may be used, except in urban areas, as well as other mechanical means such as excavation equipment, or permanent measures such as ice control structures and flood control.
Military aircraft have been used to bomb ice jams with limited success as part of an effort to clear them. Drift ice Fast ice Ice shove Pressure ridge United States National Park Service More images CRREL's Ice Jam Database
Waterway
A waterway is any navigable body of water. Broad distinctions are useful to avoid ambiguity, disambiguation will be of varying importance depending on the nuance of the equivalent word in other languages. A first distinction is necessary between maritime shipping routes and waterways used by inland water craft. Maritime shipping routes cross oceans and seas, some lakes, where navigability is assumed, no engineering is required, except to provide the draft for deep-sea shipping to approach seaports, or to provide a short cut across an isthmus. Dredged channels in the sea are not described as waterways. There is an exception to this initial distinction for legal purposes, see under international waters. Where seaports are located inland, they are approached through a waterway that could be termed "inland" but in practice is referred to as a "maritime waterway"; the term "inland waterway" refers to navigable rivers and canals designed to be used by inland waterway craft only, implicitly of much smaller dimensions than seagoing ships.
In order for a waterway to be navigable, it must meet several criteria: it must be deep enough to accommodate vessels loading to the design draft. Vessels using waterways vary from small animal-drawn barges to immense ocean tankers and ocean liners, such as cruise ships; the European Conference of Ministers of Transport established in 1953 a classification of waterways, expanded to take into account the development of push-towing. Europe is a continent with a great variety of waterway characteristics, which makes this classification valuable to appreciate the different classes of waterway. There is a remarkable variety of waterway characteristics in many countries of Asia, but there has not been any equivalent international drive for uniformity; this classification is provided by the UN Economic Commission for Europe, Inland Transport Committee, Working Party on Inland Water Transport. A low resolution version of that map is shown here. Media related to Waterways at Wikimedia Commons Blue Book on European inland waterways - access to the Blue Book database.
The objective of the “Blue Book” is to establish an inventory of existing and envisaged standards and parameters of "E-waterways" and ports in Europe and to show, on an internationally comparable basis, the current inland navigation infrastructure parameters prescribed on the Agreement on Main Inland Waterways of International Importance Waterscape - Britain's official guide to canals and lakes
France
France the French Republic, is a country whose territory consists of metropolitan France in Western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The metropolitan area of France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean, it is bordered by Belgium and Germany to the northeast and Italy to the east, Andorra and Spain to the south. The overseas territories include French Guiana in South America and several islands in the Atlantic and Indian oceans; the country's 18 integral regions span a combined area of 643,801 square kilometres and a total population of 67.3 million. France, a sovereign state, is a unitary semi-presidential republic with its capital in Paris, the country's largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. Other major urban areas include Lyon, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Nice. During the Iron Age, what is now metropolitan France was inhabited by a Celtic people. Rome annexed the area in 51 BC, holding it until the arrival of Germanic Franks in 476, who formed the Kingdom of Francia.
The Treaty of Verdun of 843 partitioned Francia into Middle Francia and West Francia. West Francia which became the Kingdom of France in 987 emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages following its victory in the Hundred Years' War. During the Renaissance, French culture flourished and a global colonial empire was established, which by the 20th century would become the second largest in the world; the 16th century was dominated by religious civil wars between Protestants. France became Europe's dominant cultural and military power in the 17th century under Louis XIV. In the late 18th century, the French Revolution overthrew the absolute monarchy, established one of modern history's earliest republics, saw the drafting of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, which expresses the nation's ideals to this day. In the 19th century, Napoleon established the First French Empire, his subsequent Napoleonic Wars shaped the course of continental Europe. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a tumultuous succession of governments culminating with the establishment of the French Third Republic in 1870.
France was a major participant in World War I, from which it emerged victorious, was one of the Allies in World War II, but came under occupation by the Axis powers in 1940. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and dissolved in the course of the Algerian War; the Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, remains today. Algeria and nearly all the other colonies became independent in the 1960s and retained close economic and military connections with France. France has long been a global centre of art and philosophy, it hosts the world's fourth-largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites and is the leading tourist destination, receiving around 83 million foreign visitors annually. France is a developed country with the world's sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP, tenth-largest by purchasing power parity. In terms of aggregate household wealth, it ranks fourth in the world. France performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, human development.
France is considered a great power in global affairs, being one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council with the power to veto and an official nuclear-weapon state. It is a leading member state of the European Union and the Eurozone, a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Trade Organization, La Francophonie. Applied to the whole Frankish Empire, the name "France" comes from the Latin "Francia", or "country of the Franks". Modern France is still named today "Francia" in Italian and Spanish, "Frankreich" in German and "Frankrijk" in Dutch, all of which have more or less the same historical meaning. There are various theories as to the origin of the name Frank. Following the precedents of Edward Gibbon and Jacob Grimm, the name of the Franks has been linked with the word frank in English, it has been suggested that the meaning of "free" was adopted because, after the conquest of Gaul, only Franks were free of taxation.
Another theory is that it is derived from the Proto-Germanic word frankon, which translates as javelin or lance as the throwing axe of the Franks was known as a francisca. However, it has been determined that these weapons were named because of their use by the Franks, not the other way around; the oldest traces of human life in what is now France date from 1.8 million years ago. Over the ensuing millennia, Humans were confronted by a harsh and variable climate, marked by several glacial eras. Early hominids led a nomadic hunter-gatherer life. France has a large number of decorated caves from the upper Palaeolithic era, including one of the most famous and best preserved, Lascaux. At the end of the last glacial period, the climate became milder. After strong demographic and agricultural development between the 4th and 3rd millennia, metallurgy appeared at the end of the 3rd millennium working gold and bronze, iron. France has numerous megalithic sites from the Neolithic period, including the exceptiona
Canoe
A canoe is a lightweight narrow vessel pointed at both ends and open on top, propelled by one or more seated or kneeling paddlers facing the direction of travel using a single-bladed paddle. In British English, the term "canoe" can refer to a kayak, while canoes are called Canadian canoes to distinguish them from kayaks. Canoes are used for competition and pleasure, such as racing, whitewater and camping, general recreation. Canoeing has been part of the Olympics since 1936; the intended use of the canoe dictates its hull length and construction material. Canoes were dugouts or made of bark on a wood frame, but construction materials evolved to canvas on a wood frame to aluminum. Most modern canoes are made of molded plastic or composites such as fiberglass. Canoes were developed by cultures all over the world, including some designed for use with sails or outriggers; until the mid-1800s the canoe was an important means of transport for exploration and trade, in some places it still is used as such with the addition of an outboard motor.
Where the canoe played a key role in history, such as the northern United States and New Zealand, it remains an important theme in popular culture. The word canoe comes via the Spanish canoa. Constructed between 8200 and 7600 BC, found in the Netherlands, the Pesse canoe may be the oldest known canoe. Excavations in Denmark reveal the use of paddles during the Ertebølle period. Australian Aboriginal people made canoes using a variety of materials, including bark and hollowed out tree trunks; the indigenous people of the Amazon used Hymenaea trees. The Pacific Northwest canoes are a dugouts made of red cedar. Many indigenous peoples of the Americas built bark canoes, they were skinned with birch bark over a light wooden frame, but other types could be used if birch was scarce. At a typical length of 4.3 m and weight of 23 kg, the canoes were light enough to be portaged, yet could carry a lot of cargo in shallow water. Although susceptible to damage from rocks, they are repaired, their performance qualities were soon recognized by early European immigrants, canoes played a key role in the exploration of North America, with Samuel de Champlain canoeing as far as the Georgian Bay in 1615.
René de Bréhant de Galinée a French missionary who explored the Great Lakes in 1669 declared: "The convenience of these canoes is great in these waters, full of cataracts or waterfalls, rapids through which it is impossible to take any boat. When you reach them you load canoe and baggage upon your shoulders and go overland until the navigation is good. American painter and traveler George Catlin wrote that the bark canoe was "the most beautiful and light model of all the water crafts that were invented." Native American groups of the north Pacific coast made dugout canoes in a number of styles for different purposes, from western red-cedar or yellow-cedar, depending on availability. Different styles were required for ocean-going vessels versus river boats, for whale-hunting versus seal-hunting versus salmon-fishing; the Quinault of Washington State built shovel-nose canoes, with double bows, for river travel that could slide over a logjam without portaging. The Kootenai of British Columbia province made sturgeon-nosed canoes from pine bark, designed to be stable in windy conditions on Kootenay Lake.
The first explorer to cross the North American continent, Alexander Mackenzie, used canoes extensively, as did David Thompson and the Lewis and Clark Expedition. In the North American fur trade the Hudson's Bay Company's voyageurs used three types of canoe: The rabaska or canot du maître was designed for the long haul from the St. Lawrence River to western Lake Superior, its dimensions were: length 11 m, beam 1.2 to 1.8 m, height about 76 cm. It could carry 60 packs weighing 41 kg, 910 kg of provisions. With a crew of eight or ten, they could make three knots over calm waters. Four to six men could portage it, bottom up. Henry Schoolcraft declared it "altogether one of the most eligible modes of conveyance that can be employed upon the lakes." Archibald McDonald of the Hudson's Bay Company wrote: "I never heard of such a canoe being wrecked, or upset, or swamped... they swam like ducks." The canot du nord, a craft specially made and adapted for speedy travel, was the workhorse of the fur trade transportation system.
About one-half the size of the Montreal canoe, it could carry about 35 packs weighing 41 kg and was manned by four to eight men. It was portaged in the upright position; the express canoe or canot léger, was about 4.6 m long and were used to carry people and news. The birch bark canoe was used in a 6,500-kilometre supply route from Montreal to the Pacific Ocean and the Mackenzie River, continued to be used up to the end of the 19th century. Popular for hauling freight on inland waterways in 19th Century North America were the York boat and the batteau. In 19th-century North America, the birch-on-frame construction technique evolved into the wood-and-canvas canoes made by fastening an external waterproofed canvas shell to planks and ribs by boat builders Old Town Canoe, E. M. White Canoe, Peterborough Canoe Company and at the Chestnut Canoe Company in New Brunswick. Although canoes were once a means of transport, with industrialization they became popular as recreational or sporting watercraft.
John MacGre
Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal
The Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal known as the Chicago Drainage Canal, is a 28-mile-long canal system that connects the Chicago River to the Des Plaines River. It reverses the direction of the Main Stem and the South Branch of the Chicago River, which now flows out of Lake Michigan rather than into it; the related Calumet-Saganashkee Channel does the same for the Calumet River a short distance to the south, joining the Chicago canal about halfway along its route to the Des Plaines. The two provide the only navigation for ships between the Great Lakes Waterway and the Mississippi River system; the canal was built as a sewage treatment scheme. Prior to its opening in 1900, sewage from the city of Chicago was dumped into the Chicago River and flowed into Lake Michigan; the city's drinking water supply was located offshore, there were fears that the sewage could reach the intake and cause serious disease outbreaks. Since the sewer systems were flowing into the river, the decision was made to dam the river and reverse its flow, thereby sending all the sewage inland where it could be treated before emptying it into the Des Plaines.
A secondary goal was to replace the shallow and narrow Illinois and Michigan Canal, which had connected Lake Michigan with the Mississippi starting in 1848. As part of the construction of the new canal, the entire route was built to allow much larger ships to navigate it, it is 202 feet wide and 24 feet deep, over three times the size of the I&M. The I&M became a secondary route with the new canal's opening and was shut down with the creation of the Illinois Waterway network in 1933; the building of the Chicago canal served as intensive and practical training for engineers who built the Panama Canal. The canal is operated by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago. In 1999, the system was named a Civil Engineering Monument of the Millennium by the American Society of Civil Engineers; the Canal was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on December 20, 2011. Early Chicago sewage systems discharged directly into Lake Michigan or into the Chicago River, which itself flowed into the lake.
The city's water supply came from the lake, through water intake cribs located two miles offshore. There were fears that sewage could infiltrate the water supply, leading to typhoid fever and dysentery. During a tremendous storm in 1885, the rainfall washed refuse from the river far out into the lake, spurring a panic that a future similar storm would cause a huge epidemic in Chicago; the only reason for the storm not causing such a catastrophic event was that the weather was cooler than normal. The Sanitary District of Chicago was created by the Illinois legislature in 1889 in response to this close call. In addition, the canal was built to supplement and replace the older and smaller Illinois and Michigan Canal as a conduit to the Mississippi River system. In 1871, the old canal had been deepened in an attempt to reverse the river and improve shipping but the reversal of the river only lasted one season; the I&M canal was badly polluted as a result of unrestricted dumping from city sewers and industries, such as the Union Stock Yards.
By 1887, it was decided to reverse the flow of the Chicago River through civil engineering. Engineer Isham Randolph noted that a ridge about 12 miles from the lakeshore divided the Mississippi River drainage system from the Great Lakes drainage system; this low divide had been known since pre-Columbian time by the Native Americans, who used it as the Chicago Portage to cross from the Chicago River drainage to the Des Plaines River basin drainage. The Illinois and Michigan Canal was cut across that divide in the 1840s. In an attempt to better drain sewage and pollution in the Chicago River, the flow of the river had been reversed in 1871 when the Illinois and Michigan Canal was deepened enough to reverse the river's flow for one season. A plan soon emerged to cut through that ridge and carry wastewater away from the lake, through the Des Plaines and Illinois rivers, to the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. In 1889, the Illinois General Assembly created the Sanitary District of Chicago to carry out the plan.
After four years of turmoil during construction, Isham Randolph was appointed Chief Engineer for the newly formed Sanitary District of Chicago and resolved many issues circulating around the project. While the canal was being built, permanent reversal of the Chicago River was attained in 1892, when the Army Corps of Engineers further deepened the Illinois and Michigan Canal. One of the issues for Randolph to resolve was a strike of about 2000 union workers, centered in Lemont and Joliet. On June 1, 1893, quarrymen went out to protest a wage cut, an action that drew in 1200 canal workers. Reports describe 400 quarrymen marching along the length of the canal project on June 2, between Lemont and Romeo, conducting a "reign of terror" at worksites, "armed with clubs and revolvers", "almost crazed with liquor". On the 9th strikers clashed with replacement workers and local law enforcement, Governor Altgeld called out the First and Second Regiments of the Illinois National Guard. Dozens were wounded and at least five killed: strikers Gregor Kilka, Jacob Ast, Thomas Moorski, Mike Berger, 17-year-old bystander John Kluga.
The strike was settled by the 15th. The new Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, linking the south branch of the Chicago River to the Des Plaines River at Lockport, in advance of an application by the Missouri Attorney General for an injunction against the opening, opened on January 2, 1900. However, it
I-55 (Stevenson Expressway)
