Chicago Portage

Continental Divides of North America. The pink line (center-right) denotes the Great Lakes-St Lawrence divide that runs through Chicago

Until the second half of the nineteenth century water transportation was virtually the only way to move trade goods and people around North America.  Therefore, connections between strategic waterways, usually involving portages, held special importance.[1]

The importance of the Chicago Portage lies in the fact that the channel cut by the Chicago Outlet River created an easy passage over the Saint Lawrence River Divide, the continental divide that separated what had become the Great Lakes waterway system from the Mississippi River waterway system and, as the illustration shows, opened up almost all of what was to become the United States from the Allegheny Mountains to the Rocky Mountains as far south as the Gulf of Mexico.[1]

Native Americans had used the portage for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans. They found the Chicago Portage to be a convenient transportation route between the shores of Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River in the interior. The map shows that the most important trails in the region led to the portage and the several fords near it.

The map also shows the Old Portage Long trail that was used when there was insufficient water in Mud Lake to allow traverse by canoe.  This trail extended to the southwest to the early settlement of Ottawa on the Illinois River.  Since there was usually sufficient water in the larger Illinois River for canoeing, this “Ottawa Trail” was used in very dry conditions when there was insufficient water in the Des Plaines River.[1]

Canoes in a fog, Lake Superior by Francis Anne Hopkins

By 1673 the French had established a trading post at present day Mackinac Island at the top of Lake Michigan.[7] In that year, the first Intendant (administrator) of New France, having heard of reports of a great river to the West and hoping it would be the long-sought "Northwest Passage" to the Pacific Ocean, ordered a reconnaissance mission to find and explore this river. In May of that year the group, consisting of Louis Jolliet, Father Jacques Marquette, and five voyageurs set out on their voyage of discovery.[8]

Accordingly, on The 17th day of may, 1673, we started from the Mission of st. Ignace at Michilimakinac where I Then was. The Joy that we felt at being selected for This Expedition animated our Courage, and rendered the labor of paddling from morning to night agreeable to us.

— Marquette

Detail from an early French map (1775) showing the Chicago Portage

The explorers found the Mississippi River, explored it,[8] and then returned to Michilimakinac by a different route on the advice of Native Americans they had encountered along the way, who told them that there was a better way to return to Lake Michigan. Travelling by stages up the Illinois River to the Des Plaines River, in September of 1673 members of the Caskaskia, a tribe of the Illinois Confederation, led Jolliet and Marquette to the western end of what became known as the Chicago Portage.[9]

During the 18th century, the Chicago Portage was one of the most strategic locations in the interior of the North American continent for the French. Particularly it provided an easy connection between the French cities of Montreal and New Orleans. An indication of the importance of portages that potentially could make this connection is shown in early maps of the region.  For example, this French map of the western regions of New France, published 1755, shows the “R.(iviere) et Port de Checageu” (River and Port of Checageu), the “Checageu River”, and the “Portage des Chenes” (the portage of oak trees), the name the French originally attached to the Portage.[10]

Map of Chicago Portage

If water level in the portage was high enough to allow passage by canoe for most of the way, passage across the portage was relatively easy. Accounts from soldiers stationed at Fort Dearborn, at the mouth of the Chicago River, describe a passage from west to east.  Starting at the west end of the portage at the Des Plaines River they paddled east through Portage Creek into the marsh that would later be known as Mud Lake.  At the east end of the marsh they portaged their boats, equipment, and supplies over the low rise of land that was the St Lawrence River continental divide.  They then entered the South Branch of the Chicago River, and paddled north to the Fort.[11]

If water levels in the portage were low, passage was difficult. In 1818 Gurdon Hubbard, then 16 years old and traveling with a “brigade” of voyageurs as an indentured clerk, crossed the Portage from East to West and left an account in his memoirs.[12][13]

They had traveled down to the Portage from Mackinac Island in bateau, heavy flat-bottomed boats.  They traveled down the South Branch of the Chicago River and pulled their boats over the St Lawrence Continental Divide into Mud Lake where the water was deep enough to float them.  Then …     

Other members of the crew carried the boats’ cargo, across the seven-mile-long land trail to the Des Plaines River.  Because of his status as clerk of the expedition, by virtue of his ability to read and write, Hubbard was spared this hard work.  He went on to describe the hardships of crossing the Portage in its natural state.[12]

After a hard day of work crossing the portage, the men camped near the river at the west end of the portage.  But their discomfort was not yet over, as Hubbard’s account continues.[12]

As commerce over the portage grew, local entrepreneurs developed services to help travelers using the Portage.  One such were the wagon roads that made commerce over the Portage so much easier during dry periods.  An example is the Ottawa trail that started as a pathway, became a wagon road, and ultimately was paved and became part of US Route 66.[14]

The earliest Europeans to cross the Portage saw the potential for a canal dug along the route of the Portage.  Louis Jolliet, after his first passage, opined that a canal across “…only a few leagues of prairie..” could link the Great Lakes with the Mississippi Valley.[14]

Eventually, Joliet’s vision came to reality in the form of the Illinois and Michigan (I&M) Canal which opened in 1848.