Shoreline Processes in Chicago
Chicago History
Montrose Peninsula North Avenue Beach Grant Park Chicago River
Chicago History
The recorded history of the city of Chicago begins in the 1600’s when the city was called Chigagou, which means “wild-garlic place”. Native American people generally avoided settling in the swampy, boggy and muddy areas that covered the land as much as twenty miles inland from the Lake of the Illinois (present day Lake Michigan). In 1673, Father Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet, two Frenchmen, passed through Chigagou, and met with the local Illinois Indians. Marquette and Joliet, though not the first white men to see Chigagou, were the first to map the territory. They had hoped to find a river connecting the Mississippi River to Lake Michigan, but instead found a swampy area which required a five to ten mile portage between a portion of the Des Plaines River and what would become known as the Chicago River. The reason that only one river (the Chicago) flowed into Lake Michigan dates back to glacial times when most of the metropolitan area was submerged beneath Lake Chicago. The beaches and sand dunes associated with this lake left ridges that kept water from flowing east into the lake. Joliet realized in the 1670’s that if a canal could be built through the portage, the city could become the great city of the Midwest. Though he never saw his dream realized, Joliet’s vision was finally completed in 1848. The Illinois and Michigan canal was an all water route, between Lake Michigan and the Illinois River, that finally connecting the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River. Coinciding with the increases in trade brought on by the construction and completion of the canal, improvements were needed along the lakefront to allow ships to call on Chicago as a port city. The original shoreline of Chicago is unrecognizable today under the skyscrapers, museums and parks that have been constructed on the 5.5 square miles of landfill created since the 1800’s (see Figure, Chrzastowski,1998). Man-made alterations included new piers, beaches, peninsulas, and even changing the course and flow direction of the Chicago River.
Montrose
Peninsula, Chicago, Illinois
The
Montrose Peninsula itself was engineered by the city of Chicago in 1872 to
provide more recreational space as well as a harbor for boats. A system
of cribs or revetments
was constructed out into the lake, and the area behind them was then
filled. These original structures were built using wood pilings and
rock-fill and covered with capstones that can be seen at the landward edge of
the beach (see Figure, Chrzastowski, 1998). At the eastern end of Montrose
Beach there is a long spit extending out into the lake (see Figure, Sleeth,
2000). The orientation of the spit has been specifically designed to
capture sand being transported south along the shoreline. The most common
orientation for storm wave approach is from the northeast. The Montrose spit,
unlike an offshore breakwater, allows these waves to crash against the shore,
but the energy of the 
waves
stays on the beach, and keeps the sand on the beach from migrating
southward. We can also observe on the east side of the Montrose Spit that
there is no buildup of sand. For more than a mile to the south of the
Montrose Peninsula, there is no sand along the shore. It has been
transported by long-shore currents to a set of groins,
constructed off Fullerton and North Avenue Beaches, that will be discussed
below. From Montrose Beach, we try to imagine the original shoreline
stretching off to the north in line with the tall condominium buildings to our
west. The beaches to the north of Hollywood Beach (about 1 mile to the
north of Montrose Beach) have not been created by landfill processes. However,
they do require maintenance to make up for sand loss to the south. Much
of the “land” used in creating these land filled parks along the lakefront
comes from the lake itself. Engineers in the 1800’s could see that the
long-shore currents carried the sand and other sediment to the south. The
majority of the sand is deposited at the south end of Lake Michigan in and immense
sandbar called the Indiana Shoals. Specially designed ships dredged the Indiana
Shoals in the late 1800’s to supply the sand needed for the proposed landfill
shoreline.
Suggestions and Extensions for Teachers
North Avenue Beach, Chicago, Illinois
At
the North Avenue Beach you can see a classic example of a beach engineered to
retain sand. This beach is known as a “perched beach” because it is
raised above the level of most beaches undergoing erosion (see Figure,
Chrzastowski, 1998). Approximately 100 feet offshore there is a submerged steel
wall above the level of the lake bottom. The wall helps contain sand on
the beach that would otherwise be transported off the lake bottom and out of
the area by long-shore currents. North Avenue Beach also has a series of
groins that reduce the transport of sand by wave action (see Figure,
Chrzastowski, 1998). The dominant direction of sand transport can be seen
here at North Avenue Beach. Observe how the south side of each beach
segment between groins has built up more sand. In most cases the transport
direction on the Lake Michigan shoreline is to the south. The measures
taken to improve the beach here have dramatically decreased the amount of sand
needed to maintain the beach for recreational purposes. Also shown in the
figure is the original shoreline, stretching off to the north along the west
edge of Lincoln Park.
Suggestions and Extensions for Teachers
Grant Park, Chicago, Illinois
Grant Park, one of the cities focal points, is a 200-acre park built
entirely on landfill (see Photo). Prior to 1830, the Chicago River flowed
into Lake Michigan near where Monroe Street intersects Michigan Avenue nearly
parallel with the north wall of the Art Institute (see Figure, Chrzastowski,
1998). In the middle 1800’s the river channel was altered to near its
present location to the north of our vantage point, though it had to
continually be dredged because it was clogged by sand transported across its
mouth. After the Great Fire of 1871, much of the debris and 
rubble
was not hauled away inland; it was simply pushed or carried to the lakeshore
where it became fill. Most of the material underneath the eastern
sidewalk along Michigan Avenue, including under the Art Institute, is consists
of the debris from the Great Chicago Fire. East of Grant Park out in the lake,
the breakwaters that protect Monroe Harbor from wave action are visible.
The easterly breakwater was completed in 1874 and the southerly one in
1880. These two breakwaters eliminate large storm waves, making Monroe
Harbor more appealing to small boats. Beyond the southerly breakwater can
be found the Adler Planetarium, Soldier Field, the Field Museum of Natural
History, McCormick Place, the Shedd Aquarium and Northerly Island (Meigs Field
Airport), all of these were built on land filled during the early 1900’s.
The shoreline surrounding Adler Planetarium is outside of the protection of the
inner breakwaters, thus, it is often is subjected to pounding by storm
waves. For this reason, the original wood and rock revetments from the
early part of the century were damaged and in need of repair. In the last
decade or so, the original revetments have been replaced, or more accurately
stated – covered by modern revetments made of concrete and steel (see Figures
below, Chrzastowski, 1998).
Chicago
River, Chicago, Illinois
Along the northern edge of Grant Park you can see the Aon building, one of the tallest buildings in the world at 1136 feet above street level, built entirely upon landfill (see left Aerial Photo). Two blocks north of Grant Park is the Chicago River (see right Aerial Photo), flowing here since the 1840’s. In 1915, the Clark street dock was the site of one of the worst boat disasters in history. The excursion boat Eastland Lake overturned at the dock, ending the lives of 844 people. In the later part of the 1800’s, with the cities population growing, sewage and waste became a problem. Most waste was simply drained into the river. Because the Chicago River was not a swift moving stream and was often clogged at its mouth by sand, the waste did not flow out into the lake as the residents had hoped. The residents of the city collected their drinking water from collection facilities just offshore in Lake Michigan. With the influx of waste in the river and in their drinking water, outbreaks of cholera and typhoid were common. In 1854, a cholera epidemic took the lives of 5 ½ percent of the population. By the 1890’s almost 1 percent of the population died each year from typhoid. In 1887, the city officials decided to attempt a bold feat of engineering and reverse the flow of the river. At a site near the original portage of Marquette and Joliet (see Portage Map, Spinney, 2000), a canal would be cut over the low ridge separating the south branch of the Chicago River from the Des Plaines River. In 1900 the 28-mile canal had been completed, as had the locks that control the flow of water now going from Lake Michigan into the Chicago River, through the Sanitary and Ship Canal, and into the Des Plaines River. There were complaints, of course, from those living downstream along the Illinois River, including a formal complaint from the government of Missouri stating that the city of Chicago was polluting the Mississippi River along their shores. In 1955 the American Society of Civil Engineers announced that the reversal of the Chicago River was one of the Seven Wonders of engineering in the United States.
Suggestions and Extensions for Teachers
Home Illinois Geological History Glaciers Glacial Park Extensions for Teachers References Glossary