Excerpt from An Inventory of Historic Engineering and Industrial Structures Within the Illinois and Michigan Canal: National Heritage Corridor

The Illinois Michigan Canal National Heritage Corridor is one of the newer additions to the National Park System -a 100-mile long urban cultural park between Peru and Chicago, Illinois, with branches up the Chicago River and the calumet-sag Channel. It includes towns and cities, as well as industries, parks and museums. The national importance of this area was made clear in 1984 when Congress established the region as the nation's first National Heritage Corridor to preserve its history and to guide its future. The I&M Canal, built between 1836 and 1848, forms the primary cultural resource or backbone of the corridor.

The corridor's physical setting varies from large urban centers and heavily industrialized areas to open prairies and thickly forested woodlands. For the most part, the corridor is enveloped by vast tracts of fertile farmland. Small rural towns, generally located along the canal, streams or rivers, dot the countryside. Within these diverse landscapes, there may be found a rich variety of historic architecture, engineering, and industrial sites that offer a tangible record of the region's evolution. In fact, the corridor presents a microcosm of the historical processes which transformed the Midwestern United States from a wilderness to an industrial center.

Throughout human history, the Des Plaines and Illinois river valley has been a strategic transportation corridor and center of cultural activity. Archeological studies have shown that the corridor has been occupied for over years by a variety of Native American cultures. The idea of developing a waterway to connect the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico was suggested by the topography of the region-the result of the last glacial retreat. Meltwaters from retreating glaciers about years ago carved the existing river valleys, leaving a low saddle between the Chicago River flowing into Lake Michigan and the Des Plaines, headwaters of the Illinois River. Native Americans used this waterway, with the Chicago Portage, to carry on their commerce. The low divide between the Des Plaines and Chicago rivers was only a few miles wide. It was so flat and swampy that during wet seasons the Indians and early explorers could travel by canoe from one river 'to the other without portaging.

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