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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ต.ค. 2024
- The opening of the Illinois and Michigan Canal in 1848 gave Illinois the key to mastery of the American mid-continent. The dream of the canal had animated every vision and under laid every plan for Illinois for 200 years before. As that vision was realized, the canal's commissioners laid out a canal port that would grow into a great metropolis; their fellow citizens patented agriculture and industrial innovations that would make this the richest economic zone the world had ever seen. That Illinois is now the most populous inland American state, and Chicago the greatest city of the American heartland, are directly traceable to the 96-mile ditch that linked the Great Lakes to the Illinois and Mississippi rivers. The Illinois and Michigan Canal is one of the best-kept secrets of American history.
I love this whole canal. I bike it often, and believe it or not the canal is great fishing.
I actually lived in Peru for a while and yet I just learned of the canal this past weekend on a weekend trip spent at Starved Rock. This is such a cool thing about Illinois.
Thanks for the history.
The house where we grew up ( in LaSalle) was on one of the originally platted lots to finance the canal. Mom's dad bought it from the original owner.
In the 1950's, we used to ride our bikes along the original towpath from LaSalle to Utica, then on to nearby Starved Rock State Park.
We also went into the Blackball caves (actually limestone-harvesting mines) near Split Rock, both are places along the canal. Lots of rattlesnakes to be alert for.
Way back when (not sure what years) there was a beer garden on the cliff north of the canal, near LaSalle.
We were told that people could use some sort of moving staircase to get taken up there, but the staircase was gone before we were kids out there.
However, I remember the beer garden, but it was accessed from the highway to the north then.
Around 1997 my son and I collected old bottles, parts of boats and other things from mud dredged from the I and M Canal from Larkin to Holbolt road in Joliet Illinois for 3 years.
These were showed at the Illinois State Museum from December 2017 till March 2018.
Well this is interesting, I watched the Canal that runs through the centre of my Town in West Yorks being filled in around 1966 aged 5, then I watched it all being dug OUT at the start of 1991 IIRC, all the locks reinstated, passage tunnel UNDER the main road dug out, and now you can go coast to coast., Lock #1 is 500m from my house today. Awesome watching this.
England is a great example of what can be done with their old industrial commercial canals... They are now used for cruising by private canalboats ... see videos of the English "narrowboats"...
Super interesting. Was biking on the trail yesterday. Looking forward to exploring it more. It’s a shame more people don’t use it but can see why. The path can be narrow in spots and with water on sometimes both sides, you just have to be careful.
Beautiful soundtrack and history.
This is amazing! I lived in Illinois for 15 years and never saw this show,
Glad for this recommendation. A little slice of America anyone can appreciate.
I wish we could make a canal system like they have in the UK in the us
Yes.
It would be wonderful to have this form of travel and recreation in the States. All thing$ considered, I'd be there in a heartbeat! :-)
Definitely
Orignally, Indiana's state line was about 15 miles to the south. It was moved so that Indiana could have some shipping waterfron on Lake Michigan.
I've ridden every foot of the I&M, as well as the Hennepin Canal. I live in Iowa now, and still get to the western portions of the Hennepin, it's a great ride. It's pretty cool, I recognize almost every spot in the video.
In Channahon,part of the canal has been dredged.i wish they would dredge the entire canal so people could use it for canoeing and kayaking
Head over to LaSalle - the canal is filled & a replica packet boat makes tours { pulled by a mule ] along their portion of the canal....
Thank you for your intellectual information, Ron Vasile. I’ve learned a lot today!
25 thousand years ago this was the Mississippi river bed along the Illinois river south. That is why it was low enough for a canal and Ronald Reagan learned to swim in this canal.
So you’re saying Ronald Reagan learned how to swim in a canal 25,000 years ago!!?………..sorry I couldn’t pass that one up!….lol……:-)
Love the idea of mile markers and facts. Chicago needs more of that to further its connection with Illinois among residents
I had no idea the canal even existed, I don't recall ever learning about it in school. I would love to take a trip along its path, too bad many of the areas have dried up.
Trouble with school history they don't teach history only what they want to teach .
@@donaldshryock2852 funny thing about that, 90% of what we were taught was lies!
Kayaking has become crazy popular. Too bad we can’t use it for that. It’s so pretty.
Very few knows anything about the early canal systems.
Ohio I think, has 2 parks around the canals. One has a boat ride in a small restored lock. The other has a series of step locks.
Not to many would notice it. There is a spot where over a hundred years of fraigh has moved through this one spot.
Ya I know, your thinkin big deal freight been moving longer then that. I. Would agree with that, you would be %100 right. But this one spot is a little more then your average spot. This one spot has rails still being used, a major truck route, I was 30yrs a driver, and the canal going through this one spot.
When you think about it and this one spot. Rail, truck and canal all in their own time has kept America moving.
Why is the water so much lower than lapping at the door of the building?
Im putting this place on my bucket list
Apparently, in England, there is quite a long boat community. People move up and down many of the canals living in long boats. I wonder if that could ever be a thing here?
When they got trains, they kept their canals. When we got trains we put track where the canals were. Kind of like we tore up trolley tracks when we got buses.
@@natehill8069 Thanks for the information. Good to know.
@@karenreynolds7109 Part of that is that since their canals were older than ours, their canals are also smaller than ours and therefore a) waste less space and b) are not as useful for trains, so it was less of a loss keeping them. OTOH being smaller means they are less commercially valuable as well and today are almost exclusively for recreation. In the '90s I had occasion to be in the UK and took a day off to follow one of the canals and visit the canal museum at Stoke Bruerne. Very entertaining and informative. I always wanted to go back and rent a narrowboat and putter along the canals for a week or two. Could never get the (now ex-) wife to agree. I follow several narrowboat vlogs.
Karen, you are correct about the narrowboat community here in the UK (people often call them long boats, but technically long boats were what the Vikings used to invade us). I part own a narrowboat for holiday use and my son lives on a narrowboat. As Nate says, many canals survived alongside the railways, although most did go into decline and many were lost. Interest grew after WW2 when people discovered their leisure potential and their historic significance. Although all owned by the state, local volunteers set up the Inland Waterways Association to lobby for their preservation and working parties carried out restoration works. Many abandoned and derelict canals were brought back into use. The network is now run and maintained by a charity, the Canals and River Trust, with income from boat licenses.
It would be nice if awareness of your surviving waterways could have a similar result.
Incidentally, my grandfather worked on the Illinois light railway as a tramcar conductor, but returned to the UK in 1914 to sign up at the outbreak of WW1.
a;ong the canal is the blackwell caves, Not natural caves but rather mine shafts, those caves were used by the bootleggers of the day as a place to make hooch, Al Capone's crew worked out of some of those caves. The durning the cold war the caves were stocked with things found in fallout shelters,, Had a buddy get a big tin of hard candy from one of the caves, It said surplus rations 1945, Hell I at it and it was hard candy.
Check out the canal system in Eastern Canada. The New York State Barge Canal is still carrying cargo and boaters.
Illinois has some wonderful history. It is sad that the criminal element moved in and took over the political realm and holds it to this day.
The "genteel" criminal element has always run Illinois and most other cities...
Sad indeed, violence, corruption, worthless justice system, the state is broken.
@@ChIGuY-town22_ mostly just Chicago, a little better at the state level but not much
The biggest hurdle to resurrecting the canals in America is the notion that they should only be used by kayakers, canoeists or barge pulled by horses. A quaint notion but totally lacking in overall public support. Canals should be reopened and maintained by the various state's DNR's and should be open for use by all registered boaters within size and speed limits. Let's take a lesson from the UK and get digging.
Need to petition Congress
with what money? thanks to decades of corrupt government , il. is still broke af. forget about weed money, that's going in their pockets too.
@@josephlalock8378 Sounds like someone needs to run for office
Not sure what kind of boats you're thinking of but whatever they are, they would need to be fairly slow moving, leisurely craft like pontoons. Faster moving type would have difficulty doing much but moving in a straight line due to the narrowness of the canal in most places. Also, that quaint notion you talk about does have its place. Illinois has its share of areas for boaters, and those places are usually attractive to only boaters. The canal offers those who prefer a quieter, more peaceful waterway a place to enjoy.
Mr Vasile is my history hero
Around Marseilles, the canal is a dry ditch. People in the area know nothing about it.
Yep my ex live in Marseille when I came up there on the weekends .we walk the trail or rode our bicycles . Great times up there
lived one block from canal in Marseilles got in trouble for riding a home made raft.
Watch Michelle Gibsons awesome research on Canals and dams. They are Much older than The official Narrative says. So is the railways wich goes side by side. The dug them up. They FOUND them. The "Founders".
My ancestors might have been on it once. They came to Montgomery in 1860.
8:15 says that in 1881 almost three-hundred boats traversed the canal's length. Is this accurate? (it seems like that's too small of a number to me.) Did only about three-hundred travel through it year during the canal's peak?
- It's a bit of a typo - he meant a 'fleet' of 300 boats traversed the canal. Tonnage for the year is logged at over a million tons! So the 300 hundred or so boats were busy.....
I bike there all the time!
Guitar Central OMG ME TOO XD ITS SOOOOOO WIERD SEEING STUFF ON YT WERE YOU LIVE RIGHT LOL XD also check my vids out imma make a vid about the lake today
Me too. Well I use to when I lived in Lockport next to dellwood park. Ive lived in several places in the United States. Lockport area along the canal and quarrys has always been my top favorite place to ride and check stuff out. So much cool stuff out there. Also I am huge fan of guitars. I own many and play the hell out of them. Rock on
Hello from Kansas 🇺🇸
use to party back in the 70s
Now used to party in any temperature🤙
Wish this had been recorded in better resolution.
Early 2000's video is wierd. At this point it was fully digital.... but it seems the early formats/codecs don't translate well. They end up looking dark, lots of green and brown.
But this in and of itself gives me a feeling of nostalgia..... for a time 15 long years ago when wacky left/right politics didn't dominate EVERYTHING.
Yea I was going to say, this was cutting edge technology at the time
When were the canals and locks built so called?
All the Great Lakes are over and above flood stage 🙏🏻🤷🏻♂️😳🥺😟 .. Probably wouldn't hurt to deepen ,
crate some of them canal's ❗❗👍🏻
American pace of life is not the same as UK slower pace, with it's thousands of narrowboats travelling 5 mph. Harrison Ford seemed to enjoy his time on UK's Shropshire canals.
Yup.... now its just a highway for invasive species to take over the great lakes
That is the chicago sanitary and ship canal. The I&M Canal is too small to spread invasive species and the locks make it impossible.
Cool but what's a canal with out a boat.
a boatless canal?
Cool & informative! Aux Sable is generally pronounced 'Oh Sable' or 'Ow Sable'...but not 'Awx Sable' !
lol...Everyone I know pronounces it "Ox Able."
la salle my home town
i rember that canal in la salle
Most of The Worlds Canals are Much older than The official Narrative. Watch Michelle Gibsons awesome research.
Unfortunately, this is not going to happen. I think it should have canals available when practical. What a draw it would be be for tourists. Etc.
Illinois northern border was so it could also have lake access also - nothing to do with the canal
Hey Jim
Why's this video the only one of this nature. Canal's like U K ❗❓❓
I know this I I said indentured servant for that reason Indian thankz fam
Yankee canal system brought to you by blood money.