The Sanitary & Ship Canal

After the growth that took place when the Illinois and Michigan Canal opened, Lemont was not through with building canals. As early as 1862 engineers recognized that, because of low water level in the canal and pollution from the Chicago River, stagnant water in the canal emitted a foul odor and spread disease. Reengineering was stalled, at first due to the Civil War, then followed by attempts that failed to correct the problems.

At that time, the Chicago River flowed into Lake Michigan and carried unsanitary sewage and filth not only into the I&M Canal but into Chicago’s Lake Michigan water supply. In 1885 heavy rainfall carried sewage and storm water into the lake and caused a major typhoid epidemic. In addition, the canal was dependent upon the level of water in the Chicago River and surface water runoff to keep it navigable. Action was demanded, and in 1889 the Sanitary District of Chicago was created.

The proposed solution was extensive and revolutionary: move the Des Plaines River to the north side of the valley and dig a deeper channel in the old river bed, routing the Chicago River into a new canal to the Des Plaines River at Lockport.

This would reverse the flow of the Chicago River from east into Lake Michigan, to west into the canal. So massive was the project that it was jokingly referred to as the “Chicago School of Earth Moving.”

On September 3, 1892, construction began. The portion of the Sanitary Ship & Canal through Lemont was especially challenging, as it ran through a rock base. The canal, 28 miles long, 150 feet wide, and 22 feet deep, required the removal of twelve million cubic yards of rock. Earlier canals, such as the Suez, had been cut through sand or earth. But Lemont, with its experienced quarry workers, was up to the task. Years of quarrying in the area had changed the technology from work done by hand to the development of such machinery as steam shovels, conveyors, grading machines, and every known apparatus for excavating and removing rock. Lemont’s experience not only made the construction of the Sanitary Ship Canal possible, but updated machinery and trained people to build the Panama Canal that followed in 1904 and finished ten years later. But still, some work could only be done by hand.

The project was such a remarkable event that it attracted tourists. The Chicago and Alton Railroad published a brochure and ran excursion trains to the site to witness a one-time opportunity to see “…the most stupendous and miraculous example of canal construction and channeling which the word has ever known….”

During the late 1890s Lemont became known for its notorious Smokey Row. The sin strip called Smokey Row had developed to suit the tastes of the men who built the I&M Canal in the 1840s, and flourished thereafter for barge, quarry, and railroad men. After the close of the Columbian Exhibition, men throughout Chicagoland looking for gambling, liquor, drugs, loose women, and other such amusements found them in Lemont, where two train lines dropped them off in the heart of the district, one running a “Gambler’s Special” on weekends. With the addition of workers on the Sanitary Canal, by 1895 it was estimated that over 100 such dives operated in Lemont.

The presence of Smokey Row set up a conflict between those who favored the economic benefits of the sin strip—such as revenue to finance better schools and other community improvements— and those who preferred their town be recognized as the Village of Faith. Smokey Row began to decline after the completion of the Sanitary Ship Canal when the workers left.