|
The I&M Canal National Heritage Corridor (IMCNHC) is a 450-square-mile region whose centerpiece is the I&M Canal. Already the Corridor's historic canal towns, nature preserves, state parks, museums, more than 80 miles of recreational trails, and the I&M canal itself collectively draw more than a million visitors annually to the IMCNHC.
Residents of the Illinois & Michigan Canal National Heritage Corridor have the chance to create a plan to preserve and improve the historic area for enjoyment today and for future generations. Together with local, state, and federal governments and the nonprofit and private sectors, residents will work to carry out the next steps in creating the future for the Corridor.
Established by Congress in 1984, the IMCNHC was the first heritage area in the nation and introduced a new kind of national park. Now the first of 49, the IMCNHC was reconfigured and reauthorized in 2006. The Canal Corridor Association, a 501(C)3 non-profit founded in 1982, has been designated the coordinating entity. The first task defined by the legislation is to create a management plan for the IMCNHC. Click here for a copy of the legislation reauthorizing the Heritage Corridor.
Why was the I&M Canal designated a National Heritage Area?
Historic Water Highway. The Illinois & Michigan Canal is a 96-mile, hand-dug waterway that forever changed the nation when it opened in 1848. The final link in America’s great water highway system of the 19th century, the Illinois & Michigan Canal connects the Illinois River and Lake Michigan (which prompted its name). Thanks to the canal, people and goods could travel from New York via the Hudson River and Erie Canal to the Great Lakes and Chicago. From that Midwestern hub they could travel to the Illinois River and ultimately the Mississippi River to St. Louis and New Orleans.
The eastern end of the I&M Canal is in what is now Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood. The western end is in LaSalle, Illinois. Before the canal, the daylong trip between Chicago and LaSalle by wagon or stagecoach was a bumpy and often very muddy journey. Once the canal opened, the trip was much more comfortable and faster. Even more important, goods could travel in bulk by water, instead of more limited wagonload quantities, making it commercially practical to ship lumber, grain and other commodities from the Midwest to Eastern and Southern markets.
From 1848 to 1900, the canal bustled with commerce. In its first years, thousands of people boarded crowded boats on their way to do business in the canal towns, visit St. Louis and New Orleans, or settle the West. Later, when railroads replaced the canal for passenger travel, canal boats continued to transport thousands of tons of commodities, as they continue to do today. Upon the opening of the larger and higher-capacity Sanitary & Ship Canal in 1900, traffic on the I&M Canal declined dramatically. The I&M Canal closed in 1933 with the opening of the Illinois Waterway. Today, the I&M Canal is a national landmark and much of it is a State Trail, winding through farmland, countryside and towns from the near Southwest side of Chicago to LaSalle. |
