Marquette and Jolliet: Envisioning the I&M Canal
“This portage - sometimes half a mile long and sometimes a few miles long, depending on conditions - was a favored spot of Native Americans who used Mud Lake as a shortcut to Lake Michigan. They showed the bypass to French explorers Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette, whom they met paddling upstream in 1673. Chicago can trace its origins to that chance encounter."
-Richard Cahan and Michael Williams
"Linking the waters of the Illinois River (and ultimately the Mississippi River) with those of Lake Michigan, the idea of the canal went back to Louis Jolliet and the early French fur traders of the 1670s.”
-The Canal Corridor Association |
Video Clip From: "Illinois and Michigan Canal" - Illinois Adventure
"Louis Jolliet, exploring the upper Illinois River Valley in 1673, is considered the first to have dreamed of a canal throughout the region to connect the Great Lakes with the Mississippi River." -Michael P. Conzen |
"He [Jolliet] envisioned the growth of long-distance trade along the waterways that would result from such a water link; he may well have imagined a couple of commercial towns that would spring up at either end of the canal; but he could headily have foreseen the rise... of a grand chain of industrial cities along its margins, collective western anchors of a vast manufacturing belt that stretched all the way eastward from Illinois to Massachusetts. His canal did materialize, though 100 times longer than the half-league that he judged sufficient, and a full 175 years late."
-Michael P. Conzen
-Michael P. Conzen