Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1931-02-06
CANAL TO FULFILL
EXPLORERS DREAM
Vision of Pere Marquette Is
Reality as Lake Michigan
Linked to Illinois River.

By the Associated Press.
CHICAGO. February ga vision
that Pere Marquette wrote home about
in 1674-,a vision of ships of commerce
sailing the Great Lakes threading
through canal to the Illinois. the Mis-
Eissippi and the Gulf of Mexico-is
nearing reality.
After centuries Of planning, some
working and much despairing, the
waterway conceived by the first white
explorers has entered the final stages
of fulfiliment in the hands of the Gov
eminent, engineer and builder.
OF the five main dam and lock prof.
ects, only one has not been awarded
to contractors. Work has been started
on two, and within the last week the
contracts have been let for the other
two. calling for the expenditure of
more than 81 100000.
Il have the highest hopes said
Lieut.. Col. W. C. Weeks, United States
engineer, that the entire project will
be open for navigation in the early
Summer of 1888"
26O Years After Discovery.
An ideal date, 1933-Chicago's sec
ond worlds fair, Tooth anniversary of
its incorporation as a village; Still
more appropriate because it will be just
$50 years after the white man first
planned such a waterway
Pere Marquette and Louis Joliet In
1878 went up the Illinois and DeS
PLANES Rivers, carried their canoes
across the Chicago Portage, lowered
them into old Mud Lake and descended
to Lake Michigan.
The next year Pere Marquette wrote
back to France that here was an ideal
place for. ''cut or canal connecting
WHIT he called the Lake of the Illi-
nois" and the river he knew as the st.
Louis" The advantage of being able
to build a boat in Lake Erie and sail
1t to the Gulf of Mexico could not be
overestimated, he wrote.
Garlic Creek" Linked Up.
Today the portage Marquette walked
across has been cut, and Garlic Greek,
or the Chicago River, is connected by
deep canal. with the Des PLANES and
Illinois Rivers. The Illinois waterway
has been taken over by the Federal
Government, its locks. dams and canals
are being rebuilt. The unreliable Hi
nois River is being harnessed to mans
will. Plans are being made to handle
1850, 900 tons of freight right from the
start
When the waterway is completed,
however, it will hardly live up to the
expectations of Marquette and the other
lake boats cannot be accommodated in
a channel that has minimum depth OF
only nine feet the principal traffic is
expected to be furnished by very drab
type of vessel, the barge. The new
waterway, nevertheless. will be the clos
est approach after all these years Of
planning and working.
1t can hardly help but be an i'm
provemept over the old Illinois and
Michigan canal, which was a failure,
even in transporting sewage. The Il.
& NJ" was only feet deep at best
and after the boats had left it they
still had the treacherous, unimproved
Illinois River to fight.
The new waterway project has three
principal parts. The sanitary district
canal. "a feet deep, ties on to the Chi
cago River and goes as far as Lockport
With the installation of machinery for
the movable bridges, this part will be
completed.
From Lockport down to Utica is the
old Illinois waterway, nearly completed
once by the State and now being fin
tshed and partly rebuilt by the Federal
Government The large share of the
work is being done here, on locks and
dams for the Des PLANES and Illinois
Rivers.