By Ann Keating
The history of the Sanitary and Ship Canal is best understood in the context
of regional decisions about a key natural resource—water. All sustainable
cities must find solutions to two 
interrelated challenges: finding and
maintaining an adequate water supply, as well as developing a method
for removing wastewater.
In the Chicago region, waterways have also been a key part of evolving
transportation networks. Chicagoans’ response to the challenge of
water was to marshall their considerable technological expertise and
great wealth to transform
nature to their own ends. Chicagoans still envisioned a future as one
of the largest cities in the world. Residents would overcome any obstacle
in
the way of that future through money and technological innovation. A
series of decisions about water led inexorably to the decision to build
the Sanitary
and Ship Canal in 1889.
Chicagoans long preferred Lake Michigan water
to other sources. From the 1830s, the intake point was close to the
mouth of the Chicago River,
and the water supply was often polluted. During the 1860s, a lake
tunnel was dug to a point two miles offshore as a new water intake point.
With continued growth and the annexation of suburban areas, Chicago
constructed additional pumping stations, dug new lake tunnels with
intakes protected by cribs, and finally in 1898 began the task of
combining
the several tunnel and pumping systems into an integrated whole.
But the tunnels did not solve the problems posed by the polluted waters
of the Chicago River emptying into Lake Michigan. From the start, Chicago’s
sewerage system emptied directly into the Chicago River. In the mid-1850s,
residents discovered that the Illinois and Michigan Canal pumps were
moving the river's pollution into the canal. From that point forward,
Chicagoans sought ways to permanently reverse the flow of the river.
In the late
1860s
the I&M canal was deepened to enlarge its sewage handling capabilities.
Under normal weather conditions, pumps pulled Lake Michigan water into
the Chicago River sending sewage downriver.
With Chicago’s continued
growth, this system was unable to maintain the reversal under adverse
weather conditions; the Chicago River, and
often Lake Michigan, remained polluted. The solution was to enlarge
the system, and all realized that it would be less costly to dig
a new channel than to enlarge the old one once more. In 1889 voters approved
the Sanitary District of Chicago (now the Metropolitan Water Reclamation
District of Greater Chicago) to implement the new channel scheme.
It
was health concerns more than improved navigation that led to the
creation of the Municipal Sanitary District in 1889 and to the expenditure
of
$31,163,032 to send Chicago’s sewage southward.
The Sanitary
and Ship Canal ran from the South Branch of the Chicago River
at Robey Street (new Damen Avenue) to Lockport, a distance of 28 miles
in
1900. Work began in 1892 on the easternmost section of the canal, 7.8
miles that ran from the South Branch of the Chicago River to
suburban Summit.
Located on the Chicago Lake Plain, this section was built through layers
of soil. Improvements included dredging sections of the South Branch
of the Chicago River to allow for larger ships to pass, as well
as to deepen
the river to assure that water would flow southwestward away from Lake
Michigan. The easternmost section of the canal was dug through
layers of soil. In
contrast to the building of the Illinois and Michigan Canal in the
1840s where virtually of the digging was done by hand, steam shovels
were an
integral part of the construction of the Sanitary and Ship Canal.
The middle section
of the main channel ran from Summit to Willow Springs, a distance of
4.3 miles, all outside the City of Chicago but in Cook County.
Here the soil
layer was thinner and workers had to cut mostly through dolomite bedrock
and new innovations in steam machinery were of increasing importance.
Dynamite was used to break up the bedrock, so that it could be
hauled away.
The final section of the canal was a nearly 15 mile
stretch through bedrock from Willow Springs to Lockport. Here thousands
and thousands of cubic yards
of stone were excavated in order to build the canal. Some of this stone
was then fashioned into blocks which were used for the canal’s retaining
walls. Specialized steam hoists and cranes were used as labor saving
devices on the canal, but thousands of workers labored long hours for
over eight
years to build the main channel. Much of the work was unskilled, drawing
recent European immigrants and African-Americans who were new to Chicago.
Canal work provided an often brutal introduction to urban life.
While
the opening of the Sanitary and Ship Canal is generally remembered
as January 1900, two further points are worth noting. First, residents at
St. Louis became concerned about the detrimental effect of Chicago’s
sewage winding its way to their front door. In 1899, the State of Missouri
was in the petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the opening of
the waterway. Fearing that St. Louis would acquire an injunction to halt
the completion of the Sanitary and Ship Canal, Sanitary District trustees
went
to West Fork of the South Branch of the Chicago River early on the
cold,
frigid morning of January 2, 1900. They came unannounced and with little
fanfare broke the temporary dam which kept water from the Chicago River
from entering the Main Channel. Water began to fill the canal, but
was not allowed to proceed beyond the dam at Lockport. But commissioners
understood
that they needed to open the Lockport end before St. Louis could file
suit.
On January 17, 1900 the Sanitary District trustees received approval
from the governor to open the dam at the Lockport Controlling Works.
Water, including
wastewater from Chicago, began to flow southward into the DesPlaines
River and then onto the Illinois and Mississippi rivers. Opening the
waterway made the threatened injunction by Missouri a moot point.
While
the Juliet, the first boat on the open waterway, traveled on January
20, 1900, it would not be for seven more years before the Sanitary
and Ship Canal was open for navigation to the Mississippi River. At that
point,
the
canal ended at a dam in Lockport, which allowed for water to flow southward
but precluded navigation. Not until 1907 was the canal extended to
Joliet and a navigation lock (as well as a powerhouse) opened the canal
to shipping.
For Chicagoans, the “Sanitary” part of the canal’s title
was of more immediately importance. While the Chicago River has served as
the region’s port after the opening of the Illinois and Michigan
Canal in 1848, cargo traffic on the Chicago River peaked in 1889, the
same
year that the Sanitary and Ship Canal was approved. Port facilities
moved south
to the Calumet Harbor. By 1906, the volume of traffic at Calumet Harbor
exceeded that handled in the rest of the Chicago Region. The completion
of the Cal-Sag Channel in 1922 (and its expansion after 1955) and the
opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959 reinforced the dominance
of the Calumet
Harbor in the region.
Ann Durkin Keating
North Central College
For Further Reading
Cain, Louis P. Sanitation Strategy for a Lakefront Metropolis (1978).
Hill,
Libby. The Chicago River: A Natural and Unnatural History (2000).
Keating,
Ann Durkin, ed. “Water,” Digital Interpretive Essay,
Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago (2005). www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org
Solzman, David M. The Chicago River: An Illustrated History and
Guide to the River and its Waterways (1998).
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