Chicago river libby hill

An intimate biography of the heroic creek that Chicago made. When Jolliet and Marquette used the Chicago portage, the Chicago River was a humble, even sluggish, stream in the right place at the right time.

That's the story of the making of Chicago. This is the other story? Libby Hill brings together years of original research and field explorations to tell the Chicago River's epic and exciting tale, including her discrediting of Chicago's cholera epidemic as an urban legend, which is now considered the final word on the topic. Get A Copy. Paperback , pages. More Details Original Title. Other Editions 4. Friend Reviews. To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

To ask other readers questions about The Chicago River , please sign up. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Very very thorough. And very very dry.

Ironic, considering this is a book about a river and its watershed. I only read this or most of it for work. It kinda sorta helped me understand the history of the Chicago River better, but only when I was able to keep my eyes open long enough to read more than one or two paragraphs without falling asleep. Feb 21, Bill Burns rated it liked it. This is clearly a local interest book. Having grown up in Chicago, I found it fascinating, but someone from elsewhere would likely fall asleep.

Recommend for locals - not so much for others. Feb 21, Beth rated it really liked it. This book definitely has an academic feel — heavily researched, a little dry, history minutia aplenty, and arcane engineering terms — and I LOVED it! It makes me long to go back to Chicago to view the city from the aspect of the rivers outward, rather than the lake inward. The struggle of man over nature winds from This book definitely has an academic feel — heavily researched, a little dry, history minutia aplenty, and arcane engineering terms — and I LOVED it!

The struggle of man over nature winds from early efforts to portage Mud Lake, to modern billion dollar sewer and tunnel systems required to sustain a population of millions. Through it all we see innovations in technology, changing attitudes towards the environment, and the ever-persistent fear of the rivers in terms of flood, disease, and the impacts to livelihoods.

The river can take your income, your home, and even your life, and so the battle of bending the river to the will of man is fixed. The result is the astonishing ability to reverse a river and leap a sub-continental divide.

Let that sink in. What might seem incomprehensible to some, even after the fairly thorough history here, is the congressional, federal agency, state, local, and judicial conflicts, proceedings, and decisions surrounding this watershed. I stopped counting the number of Illinois Supreme Court and U. This becomes, then, almost a tale of government contracting and the intricate and confounding world that it creates. These aspects tickled me the most!

It also may influence one to the belief that if you must have an agency involved in your local watershed, you are much better off with the National Park Service than the war department and its successors.

Even better, she quotes Chicago historian Alfred T. Sep 24, Peter Notier rated it really liked it. To understand the City of Chicago, it is necessary to understand the history of its relationship to and reliance upon the Chicago River.

Libby Hill's account of this dynamic feedback loop is both thorough and fascinating as she demonstrates how the geology and geography of the Chicago and Des Plaines Rivers largely determined the location and history of the city of Chicago up through the first decades of the 21st century. She traces how, millions of years ago, the bedrock formation upon which th To understand the City of Chicago, it is necessary to understand the history of its relationship to and reliance upon the Chicago River.

She traces how, millions of years ago, the bedrock formation upon which the Great Lakes lie was created, along with the divide between what would become the Chicago and Des Plaines watersheds. The retreat of the Wisconsin Glacier 14, years ago then led to the formation of both the Great Lakes and the rivers that flow into them. Indigenous cultures settled the southwest corner of Lake Michigan for thousands of years before the arrival of European explorers and traders in the 18th century.

The attraction of this location's geography to them was the short less than two mile portage between the Chicago and Des Plaines Rivers. The primary obstacle in this portage was a slough called Mud Lake. Overcoming this obstacle and assuring the smooth flow of trade westward to St.

Louis and beyond became a major factor in the growth of the city and, in turn, its influence on the river, beginning with the establishment of a farm by Jean Baptiste Point du Sable in and the building of Fort Dearborn in Meanwhile, there was still work to be done in Chicago.

Although the reversal of the Chicago River was hailed as a public health and engineering triumph, the populations of several lakefront suburbs grew and continued dumping their own waste into Lake Michigan. Neighboring states along the Great Lakes, meanwhile, grew concerned about the diversion of Lake Michigan water to the Chicago River.

After the Supreme Court ruled that those concerns were warranted, a series of locks were installed to help control the diversion of the fresh lake water into the river. Although the death rate decreased in Chicago, the river continued to be an open sewer system, carrying raw human and industrial waste through the city. It serves more than five million people and processes approximately 1. In recent years, those treatments have begun to include disinfection, a process that has made the Chicago River cleaner than it has been for more than years.

New, unforeseen challenges — the migration of invasive species such as the Asian Carp into the Chicago River foremost among them — have recently reopened conversations about how the river might continue to be engineered and whether it ought to be restored to its natural course. Chicagoans continue looking for solutions to seemingly insurmountable threats, pushing the limits of their imagination, and seeking out solutions that will continue to protect the city and its waterways for generations to come.

Skip to main content. More than an update of the first edition, it contains new topics reflecting the dynamic river. Skip to main content. Banner Main Content Area.