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Reflections
Port of Chicago another manmade marvel : Reflections : Oswego Ledger-Sentinel : Hometown Newspaper for Oswego and Montgomery, IllinoisPort of Chicago another manmade marvel
| by Roger Matile
| 3/9/2006
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Sometimes things that people create are around for so long that everyone believes they were created by Mother Nature. That’s what has happened with the Port of Chicago.
When the first Europeans finally made it to the foot of Lake Michigan in the 17th Century, they found the Chicago River emptying into the lake across a sandbar. They found the river didn’t flow directly into the lake. Thanks to wind and wave action and the Lake Michigan current as well as the tepid flow of the Chicago River, a long narrow sandbar was created forcing the current of the river’s flow 90-degrees south for about 400 feet from where the river mouth ought to have been. There, the river water finally mixed with lake water across a shallow bar with only 18 inches of water over it.
LaSalle had a small fur trade post at Chicago in the late 1600s, and local Potawatomi tribal groups had a village, there off and on, as well. But until 1779 when African-American fur trader Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, reportedly originally from Haiti, built his trading post at the mouth of the river, there was no real permanent settlement.
Du Sable’s trading post became the basis around which a small fur trade establishment grew and which U.S. Army soldiers found in 1803 when they arrived to build Ft. Dearborn. From then until 1816, ships arriving at Chicago were forced to anchor up to a mile offshore and send cargo in to the river in small boats that could cross the shallows at the bar and then be rowed up the river to unload.
In 1816, another party of troops arrived to rebuild Ft. Dearborn, the original having been burned by pro-British Indians in 1812. This group decided rowing all the way around the finger of sand that extended south of the river’s actual mouth was, literally, a pain in the neck. So they dug a channel through the bar deep enough to get small boats loaded with supplies directly to the fort site, which was located right where the river took that 90-degree bend.
Unfortunately, the soldiers quickly found that digging a channel didn’t mean it would stay dug. As quickly as they cleaned the sand out, the lake and river replaced it. After all, it seemed like it ought to work. The river current, it seemed, ought to have kept the channel open once it was opened and a dam closed the one at the south end of the bar. But the Chicago River’s flow was so sluggish and the currents and wind on Lake Michigan were so strong that additional efforts in 1818, 1823, and 1829 also failed.
The lack of a natural harbor at Chicago was a drag on growth in the area south and west of the lake. Ships that arrived had to anchor offshore and unload, and their captains didn’t want to stay overnight lest a fast-moving norther roaring down the lake out of Canada would drive their ship aground. The matter apparently came to a head when Gen. Winfield Scott arrived in 1832 with U.S. Army troops aboard three steamships to fight the Black Hawk War. Scott’s problems getting his men and equipment ashore highlighted the problem and with plans for the Illinois & Michigan Canal moving ahead, it was clear a harbor was needed. The next year Congress appropriated $25,000 for the creation of a harbor. Plans called for a 200-foot wide channel through the bar at the mouth of the river reinforced by piers on either side. The original plans, which had been drawn in 1830, envisioned two piers of equal length. In the end, the Army decided to make the northern pier 700 feet long and the southern one 200 feet long in order to displace the lake current farther east. The idea apparently was that the current would carry the sand further into the lake instead of allowing it to wash into the channel between the two piers.
But the lake was made of sterner stuff. It would eventually cost an additional $100,000 and many more years of work to perfect the channel through the bar. But no one knew that at the time and work on the channel started in the summer of 1833. Then on Feb. 15, 1834, a huge storm hit the area and the Chicago River swelled to several times its usual volume. The flood channeled by the new piers, washed right through the bar, deepening and clearing out the channel Ft. Dearborn commander Maj. George Bender was having dug. It was a fortuitous storm. On May 4, Oliver Newberry’s steamer, the 472-ton Michigan, sailing out of Detroit, became the first steamer to chug into the Chicago River and pass under the Dearborn Street drawbridge, which had just been finished.
Then on July 12, the 100-ton schooner Illinois became the first sailing ship to navigate directly into the river from the lake through the storm-scoured channel. Flag bedecked and under full sail, she cruised up the river to the cheers of the town’s residents, who lined the banks and crowded down to the wharf at Newberry & Dole.
The effect of the new harbor was dramatic. In 1833, only four sailing ships arrived at Chicago. In 1834, the year the initial harbor work was completed, 176 vessels came. The next year, the total surged to nearly 250; and when the shipping season ended on Dec. 1, 1836, 1,456 ships had arrived at Chicago’s harbor. Of the total, 39 were steamboats. By June 1879, the harbor at Chicago had more arrivals and departures and handled more gross tonnage than did the port of New York for the same month.
Eventually, the channel piers were extended nearly a half-mile into the lake. Wave action eliminated the bar south of the piers, much to the disgust of land speculators who had bought the land. And the port at Chicago became one of those things we take for granted has always been there.
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