The Illinois and Michigan Canal connected the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. In Illinois, it ran 96 miles (154 km) from the Chicago River in Bridgeport, Chicago to the Illinois River at LaSalle-Peru. The canal crossed the Chicago Portage, and helped establish Chicago as the transportation hub of the United States, before the railroad era. It was opened in 1848. Its function was partially replaced by the wider and deeper Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal in 1900, and it ceased transportation operations with the completion of the Illinois Waterway in 1933.
Lemont is a village located in Cook, DuPage, and Will counties in the U.S. state of Illinois, and is a south-west suburb of Chicago. The population was 17,629 as of the 2020 census. The village is situated on a hillside along the south banks of the Des Plaines River. It overlooks Waterfall Glen's Midwestern Bluff Savanna on the opposite side. Lemont is home to Argonne National Laboratory and other heavy industrial sites, and has a substantial European immigrant population.
Lockport is a city in Will County, Illinois, United States, located 30 miles southwest of Chicago. Per the 2020 census, the population was 26,094. The city was incorporated in 1853. It is situated along the Illinois and Michigan (I&M) Canal, and was the headquarters of the canal when the canal was operating. A section of the canal runs through Lockport, including the remains of the canal's Lock No. 1 from which the town received its name. The canal right-of-way is now the Illinois and Michigan National Heritage Corridor.
Illinois Route 171 (IL 171) is a 38.61-mile-long (62.14 km) north–south state highway in northeastern Illinois. It runs from U.S. Route 6 (US 6) in Joliet north to Illinois Route 72 at the Chicago–Park Ridge border. The section of IL 171 on Archer Avenue from Joliet to Summit is historically significant, originating as a Native American trail, and later serving for a time as part of the first numbered highway between St. Louis and Chicago.
The Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, historically known as the Chicago Drainage Canal, is a 28-mile-long (45 km) canal system that connects the Chicago River to the Des Plaines River. It reverses the direction of the Main Stem and the South Branch of the Chicago River, which now flows out of Lake Michigan rather than into it. The related Calumet-Saganashkee Channel does the same for the Calumet River a short distance to the south, joining the Chicago canal about halfway along its route to the Des Plaines. The two provide the only navigation for ships between the Great Lakes Waterway and the Mississippi River system.
The Lockport Powerhouse is a run-of-the-river dam used by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago to control the outflow of the Sanitary and Ship Canal and limit the diversion of water from Lake Michigan into the Des Plaines River.
The Illinois Waterway system consists of 336 miles (541 km) of navigable water from the mouth of the Calumet River at Chicago to the mouth of the Illinois River at Grafton, Illinois. Based primarily on the Illinois River, it is a system of rivers, lakes, and canals that provide a shipping connection from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico via the Illinois and Mississippi rivers.
This is a list of properties and districts in Illinois that are on the National Register of Historic Places. There are over 1,900 in total. Of these, 85 are National Historic Landmarks. There are listings in all of the state's 102 counties.
This National Park Service list is complete through NPS recent listings posted August 4, 2023.
The Gaylord Building, constructed in 1838 in the downtown historic district of Lockport, Illinois, and on the canalside there, played a pivotal role in the construction of the Illinois and Michigan Canal. It is on the United States National Register of Historic Places, and is one of 29 Historic Sites of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It is constructed of yellow limestone, a common construction material in north central Illinois. It has an Italianate three story addition added in 1859. After falling into disrepair, it was the focus of a concerted restoration and preservation effort that began in 1983, which was later noted as setting a model for such efforts.
This is a list of the 131 National Register of Historic Places listings in Cook County, Illinois outside Chicago and Evanston. Separate lists are provided for the 62 listed properties and historic districts in Evanston and the more than 350 listed properties and districts in Chicago. The Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal Historic District extends through the West Side of Chicago, DuPage County and Will County to Lockport.
The Calumet-Saganashkee Channel, usually shortened to the Cal-Sag Channel, is a 16-mile-long (26 km) drainage and shipping canal in southern Cook County, Illinois, operated by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRD). A component of the Chicago Area Waterway System, it connects the Little Calumet River to the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal.
The Chicago and Joliet Electric Railway, or C&JE, was an electric interurban railway linking the cities of Chicago and Joliet, Illinois. It was the only interurban between those cities and provided a link between the streetcar network of Chicago and the cities along the Des Plaines River Valley in north central Illinois, which were served by the Illinois Valley Division of the Illinois Traction System.
Armour's Warehouse, also known as the Seneca Grain Elevator or the Hogan's North Elevator, is a historic grain elevator located in the village of Seneca, Illinois, United States. The elevator and two surrounding outbuildings were listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 1997.
The Ninth Street Seven Arch Stone Bridge was a historical bridge in Lockport, Illinois. The bridge was the region's first over the Des Plaines River, facilitating trade between farmers west of the river and merchants in Lockport. Farmers were previously forced to use a ford, located near 9th Street. It was approved on March 20, 1868, and cost $4,000. The arch bridge was constructed using locally quarried limestone in eight to twelve inch blocks. Each arch of the bridge spanned 197 foot (60 m). The builder is unknown, but may have been Julius Scheibe, a notable local mason who built many of the city's stone structures of the era. Schiebe was also a highway commissioner during the bridge's construction. A concrete slab had to be added to the foundation of the bridge in the early 1900s due to increased water levels caused by the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. The Ninth Street Seven Arch Stone Bridge was closed to traffic in 1971 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.
The Will County Historical Society Headquarters is a historic building in Lockport, Illinois, United States, originally known as the Illinois and Michigan Canal Office Building. It served as the headquarters of the Canal Commission of the Illinois and Michigan Canal from 1836 until 1871, when control of the canal was transferred to the state.
There are 70 sites in the National Register of Historic Places listings in West Side, Chicago, out of more than 350 listings in the City of Chicago. The West Side is defined for this article as the area north of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, south of Fullerton Avenue, west of the Chicago River and east of the western city limits. One site, Logan Square Boulevards Historic District, spans a border and is included also in listings on the North Side. The Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal Historic District extends through Cook County west of Chicago, DuPage County and Will County to Lockport.
Walter Mickle Smith, Sr. was a civil engineer who worked primarily on U.S. dams and waterway projects. He was a consulting engineer on the construction of the Panama Canal and Panama Canal Locks and later served as design engineer for the New York Board of Water Supply. He spent much of his career with the State of Illinois waterways division and was its chief engineer until his retirement in 1937. Several of his works built in the 1920s and 1930s as part of the Illinois Waterway project are listed on the National Register of Historic Places, including portions of the Brandon Road Lock and Dam, the Dresden Island Lock and Dam, the Lockport Lock and Power House, and the Marseilles Lock and Dam.
Sag Bridge, Illinois is an Unincorporated community in Lemont Township in southwestern Cook County, Illinois, United States. Sag Bridge is an important waterway junction between the Calumet Sag Channel and the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal. It is also the junction of IL 83 and IL 171 which meet at Sag Bridge to cross the Calumet Sag Channel together on the eponymous bridge. The community was named for a predecessor of the present bridge. It is within the village limits and postal delivery zone of Lemont, Illinois.
The Lemont Downtown Historic District is a commercial historic district encompassing 14 city blocks in downtown Lemont, Illinois. The district has served as the village's downtown since the 1850s, when the newly opened Illinois & Michigan Canal and subsequent limestone quarrying in the area sparked a local economic boom. It expanded through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as new railroads and the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal brought residents and business opportunities to the village. The commercial buildings in the district exhibit a variety of common building types seen between 1850 and 1950; one-part, two-part, gable-front, and false-front buildings are all present, and their designs feature Italianate, Commercial, and revival style architecture. The district also includes several of Lemont's government buildings, including its village hall and post office.
