Chicago and Its Inland Sea

World-class cities have landmarks of iconic stature: think of the city and the image leaps to mind. Chicago has many such images, but few surpass its magnificent frontage on Lake Michigan--a complex of parks, promontories, boulevards, and museums stretching for miles along the shoreline. The 2006 Annual Meeting of the AAG is being held in Chicago, March 7-11, and we hope that during your stay you will set aside time to explore these distinctive geographical features of the region.

Chicago's lakefront has always had a major influence upon the city's fortunes, and it has created problems as well as amenities. Early residents faced several crucial difficulties. One was the need to stabilize the shoreline and put in place facilities capable of handling high levels of commercial traffic. Another was to develop an adequate and pure supply of water. In the face of increasing regional population levels, a third problem has recently grown in importance: that is the question of how to provide sustainable water supplies and management, not just for metropolitan and local users, but for regional needs as well.

Chicago lies within the Great Lakes watershed. The Chicago River drained originally into Lake Michigan, but only a few miles and a low rise separate it from the Des Plaines, which is tributary to the Mississippi. The strategic importance of this location, and the potential it held for canalization, were noted as far back as 1673 when Father Marquette and Louis Jolliet passed through the region. The city's environment, though, was not a healthy one. The site which would become Chicago was marked by low, shifting sand dunes interspersed with extensive marshy swales (see figure). The river was a low-gradient stream, often kept from entering the lake by sediments deposited at its mouth. Still, the portage to the Mississippi began here. For that reason, Fort Dearborn was constructed on the river's south bank in 1803. Those attending the AAG meeting can find an outline of the fort embedded in pavement at the intersection of Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive, just a few blocks from the meeting headquarters hotel.

The river originally entered the lake in the vicinity of Monroe Street, where the Art Institute now stands. Lake freighters, in an enterprise fraught with hazard, anchored over a half-mile offshore while goods were transferred to smaller vessels capable of navigating the sandbars obstructing the river's mouth. In 1834, efforts to remove those obstacles began, and the river was re-routed into its present channel. Within a year, vessels of 100-ton capacities were entering the new harbor, and Chicago became the leading port on the frontier. These investments rapidly came to be protected by a system of piers, breakwaters, landfills, and revetments.

Railroads also impacted the lakefront. The Illinois Central completed its route through Illinois by 1856, but needed a downtown terminal and had purchased the area south of Fort Dearborn for that purpose. The state had previously designated much of that area to remain "forever open, clear, and free," and the shoreline south of today?s Loop had already been built up. The railroad's solution was to enter Chicago on a trestle built out in the lake. That trestle ran from 22nd Street to the point occupied by Millennium Park today. The area between Michigan Avenue and the trestle was a lagoon, "open and free" views of the lake not-withstanding. After the Great Chicago Fire devastated the city in 1871, practical city fathers simply dumped the conflagration's debris into that lagoon. Many visitors to Chicago are surprised to learn that the Art Institute and, indeed, much of Grant Park is built on material left over from that fire.

From the 1890s through the 1930s, additional landfills expanded the lakefront area, and on these Chicago's world-famous museums, Soldier Field, McCormick Place, and Northerly Island were all built. To the north, much of Lincoln Park is also built on fill. Only that portion of the city north of Hollywood Avenue follows the original shoreline. These landfills were vulnerable to wave erosion. To protect the lake shore, a system of revetments was installed. Many of these revetments are now fifty to one hundred years old, and in some areas the shoreline has deteriorated badly. Consequently, the city, the Chicago Park District, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are currently involved in the Chicago Shoreline Project, a $300 million dollar program designed to re-build these protective structures ( www.lrc.usace.army.mil/projects.htm). The project was scheduled to be completed by 2005, but disputes over design standards and accessibility to the lakefront have slowed progress and put federal funds at risk.

Chicago also needed to protect its water supply. During much of the early 19th century this problem was largely ignored; water was collected in barrels at the shoreline or even from the lower course of the Chicago River. It was known though, that water was "purer" the farther off-shore one went to get it. By 1840, a water intake was located 150 feet out into the lake; in 1854 an attempt was made to extend that intake to 600 feet. Pressure had to be equalized in the early mains, so the city built the historic Water Tower and its neighboring pumping station in 1869. Both of these landmarks survived the 1871 fire and are major tourist attractions today.

Since the sewage-laden river flowed into the lake, near-shore supplies of water were easily polluted. Cholera, smallpox, dysentery, and typhoid were perennial scourges. An 1854 cholera epidemic, for example, caused the deaths of 5.5 percent of the city's population. In 1861, an astonishing solution was devised by an engineer named Ellis Chesbrough. Tunnels were dug by hand through the clays underlying the lake. Thirty feet beneath the lake bottom, five feet in diameter, and two miles long, the first tunnel was completed in 1867. An intake crib was constructed at its terminus, and the tunnel and crib were joined. This crib, enlarged and strengthened, is one of four visible in the lake today.

Even these efforts were not enough, as intermittent flooding, increasing population, and the growth of animal rendering industries combined to exceed the city's sewage treatment capacities. By 1879, disease organisms were again commonly found in lake waters around the intake cribs. A permanent solution was not developed until, on January 2, 1900, engineers finally reversed the flow of the Chicago River. Today, locks at the entrance to Lake Michigan, and on the Des Plaines, twenty-eight miles away, control diversion rates and prevent floodwaters from "backing" into the lake.

Chicago continues working to protect its water supply with the "Deep Tunnel Project," formally known as TARP (the Tunnel and Reservoir Plan). Chicago shares a combined sewer system with over fifty surrounding suburbs. During extreme precipitation events, storm run-off from these sewers added to normal sewage loads may total five billion gallons a day, exceeding the treatment system's capacity by 250 percent. TARP consists of 109 miles of underground reservoirs designed to intercept and store this run-off, and release it in a controlled fashion after rain has ended. The TARP project is ongoing, and the Local Arrangements Committee hopes to showcase this incredible facility.

Finally, water levels in the Great Lakes are now near historic lows and proposals to divert water are increasing rapidly. Over 118 suburban communities, for example, get their water directly from the Chicago water system, and southern Lake Michigan communities are estimated to see a 21 percent increase in population by the year 2030. Chicago's western neighbor, Kane County, by itself expects to see water use increase from 67 million gallons per day (mgd) to 120 mgd over the next twenty- five years. These trends are of critical importance to the entire metropolitan area, and for such reasons Chicago will continue to participate in regional water-planning programs such as the Southern Lake Michigan Regional Water Consortium ( www.nipc.org/environment/slmrwsc/overview.htm).

To a true Chicagoan however, the lake is more than the sum of its engineering facilities and water management agreements. Those who grew up here often remember mornings where one could "feel" the lake from miles away. Even if one comes to the city later in life, in one way or another, the lake can call, and you develop--sometimes without being aware of it--an awareness, a relationship. You orient yourself in regard to the lake; it burrows beneath the level of your conscious mind.

Ben Hecht, the playwright and reporter, spent many years working for the Chicago Daily News. In one of his columns, he wrote:

"It is when one leaves the city and goes to visit in another place where there is no lake that the lake grows alive. One becomes thirsty for it and dreams of it. One remembers it then as something that was almost an essential part of life, like a third dimension. In some ways one associates one's day dreams with the lake and falls into thinking that there is something unfinished, sterile, about living with no lake at one's elbow."

The AAG invites you to explore this "third dimension," and learn of the myriad ways in which Chicago and its inland sea have influenced each other.

John Schroeder
jscroed@jjc.edu

Please direct all queries to:

Association of American Geographers 1710 16th Street NW,br> Washington, DC 20009 Voice: (202) 234-1450 Fax: (202) 234-2744 E-mail: meeting@aag.org