While studying the
C&IW bridge, I learned from Historic Bridges that the canal slip it goes over is named the Collateral Channel. To understand the Collateral Channel, we need to understand the West Fork of the South Branch of the Chicago River that existed before the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal was built. This 1916 Map shows that the West Fork still existed 16 years after the CSSC was opened. It is now filled in except for a
"bump" in the canal with irregular sides, which was probably left as a turning basin. The straightness of the west end of the branch indicates a Ship Canal was dug to extend the waterway for more industrial development similar to the way Ogden formed
Goose Island by digging the channel on the east side to create more water-served property.
This 1897 Map confirms a canal was dug starting around 39th and Central. It indicates that the South Branch Dock Company relocated the South Branch when it worked with CB&Q to build
an industrial park in the 1860's. The map also shows that work was done on the east end of the branch to straighten it and connect it with the main channel of the South Branch Dock Co. The 1916 map indicates the Ship Canal went West almost to Harlem Avenue.
The modified West Folk was long enough that I need two aerial photos to cover what was left of it in 1938.
The Collateral Channel was dug so that the West Fork east of the channel could be filled in making land that could be sold while allowing the industries west of it to still have use of the Ship Canal. If you zoom in on the "west" photo, you can see the Ship Canal was filled in west of Cicero Avenue. You can also see open hopper cars just east of Cicero Avenue. These would be on the
C&IW.
Unfortunately, the Collateral Channel is now stagnate water that smells if there is not a wind to blow the stink away.
About six years ago, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago gave serious consideration to a solution: capping the area and installing a wetlands project.
According to a 2008 public notice about the project posted by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, the MWRD and researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago found that sediment in the channel was highly contaminated with polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons “at a level that is of significant concern for ecological health and human health.”
Alarming words, yet no action was taken. (SunTimes)
Patrick Engineering evidently did
the 2008 wetlands study that MWRD paid for and then ignored.
The Little Village Environmental Justice Organization has offered to the MWRD to use Boy Scouts to help clean up the channel and the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal itself between the Collateral Channel and
Bubbly Creek. The MWRD has proposed filling up the channel with rocks and making a small park. Hopefully the rocks will be deep enough to keep the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons away from the kids playing in the park. (
HispanicTimes,
ChicagoRegionTreesInitiative)
The book "Building the Canal to Save Chicago" mentions a kind of confusing dispute before the Main Channel was built, too, of disagreements with the local railroads (the three lines together just west of Western) for a second moveable bridge just south of the existing one over the West Fork as being the reason. And that they objected because it would cause delays to have two bridges like this so close. The solution was that the existing bridge could be rendered as fixed/immovable when the new bridge was completed.
ReplyDeleteAnd then it's mentioned in passing the companies along the West Fork wanted navigation maintained, as you highlighted - but the book makes it sound as if it's only related to maintaining an opening during construction of the channel, which doesn't make sense.
I guess if you twist all this together that it makes sense. If the existing bridge over the West Fork was fixed in place, it'd become an obstacle, and thus the Collateral Channel would be the maintain access to shipping AFTER the Main Channel came into operation.
"I guess if you twist all this together that it makes sense. If the existing bridge over the West Fork was fixed in place, it'd become an obstacle, and thus the Collateral Channel would be the maintain access to shipping AFTER the Main Channel came into operation."
DeleteOkay, re-read the passage, and this is the reason for the Collateral Channel. The railroads were ready to sue if they Sanitary District essentially forced them to have to build a second movable bridge over the new channel in the area. So the way the Sanitary District got agreement for it was to promise them that they could fix in place their existing bridge over the West Fork after their new one over the Main Channel was completed. The Collateral Channel kept access to the West Fork for shipping traffic west of it.
Talk of filling and developing the West Fork east of the channel wouldn't become a real thought until the 1920's.