Chicago’s rise was tied to the Illinois and Michigan Canal, a ninety-seven-mile waterway begun in 1836 and completed in 1846 to connect Lake Michigan with the Illinois River, creating a route to the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico and opening the Midwest to commerce in the mid-nineteenth century. Planned at its eastern end by canal commissioners was a town called Chicago, and when the canal opened, the tiny village grew into the most important city of the American Midwest. Although the canal closed in 1933, its influence continued, and in 1984 Congress designated the canal region as the I&M Canal National Heritage Corridor. The canal and its corridor remain places where people can experience prairie landscapes, historic canal towns, surviving locks, aqueducts, and canal-side warehouses, including the Gaylord Building in Lockport and the LaSalle County Historical Society Museum in Utica.
