Portage Passage

For hundreds of years, early travelers and settlers carried canoes, belongings, and trade goods through the Chicago Portage between the Des Plaines River and the Chicago River, along a route used by Marquette, Jolliet, and countless other explorers and traders. The length and difficulty of the portage changed with the seasons: in high water, canoes could be paddled up Portage Creek and through seasonal Mud Lake to the Chicago River without overland travel; in semi-dry times, Mud Lake became a huge swamp that forced travelers to drag their canoes through waist-deep mud; and in very dry times, with little or no standing water, they had to carry boats and belongings over the Long Portage Trail for up to 95 miles, the full distance between the South Branch of the Chicago River and the Illinois River near LaSalle/Peru. The water in front originally flowed as part of the Des Plaines River, but during construction of the Sanitary and Ship Canal in the late 1890s it was cut off from the river and partially filled, creating still water for most of the year that supports native plants such as small duckweed, a floating plant with dangling roots and the world's smallest flowering plant.

Lyons, Illinois · United States