The west end of the old Chicago Portage linked the Illinois River with Lake Michigan and provided an important route between the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes. In 1673, while returning to Canada from an expedition to the Mississippi River, French explorer Louis Jolliet and missionary Father Jacques Marquette were guided by American Indians along the Mississippi River to the Illinois River, then to the Des Plaines River, through Portage Creek into Mud Lake, and across the ancient Chicago Portage. Jolliet recognized that this route greatly shortened travel between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River and could simplify trade and exploration, though the portage itself was difficult and dangerous; he observed that cutting through only half a league of prairie could create an easy water passage between the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico. French and American traders also used the portage, carrying inverted birchbark canoes on their shoulders and hauling ninety-pound packs of trade goods into Illinois in the fall and heavy packs of pelts back to New France in the spring. Gurdon Hubbard, who spent his life in northern Illinois, crossed the Chicago Portage many times as a young fur trader and trapper and later helped promote a canal to replace it. Working with others including Abraham Lincoln, he campaigned for the Illinois and Michigan Canal, introduced the bill for its construction, and saw the project begin on July 4, 1836, before it opened in 1848. The portage had been an easy route when Mud Lake was full and unfrozen, but low water and marshy conditions often forced travelers to carry canoes or drag heavy boats through mud. As Chicago's industries expanded, the canal provided faster and cheaper transportation, sharply increasing the city's shipping and trade and reducing a journey that had once taken Hubbard three weeks to a single day.
