The History of Chicago's Air Quality.

Like most large cities, Chicago has a history of poor air quality. As it industrialized, Chicago relied on the dirty soft coal of southern Illinois for power and heat. Burned in boiler rooms, locomotives, steel mills, and domestic furnaces, the ubiquitous coal created an equally ubiquitous smoke. Soot soiled everything in the city, ruining furniture, merchandise, and building facades. Chicago legislated against dense smoke in 1881, but residents and visitors continued to complain about choking clouds and filthy soot. In addition to smoke, the numerous industries surrounding the slaughterhouses produced foul odors and dangerous chemical emissions, further diminishing air quality.

Coal burning steamer on the Chicago River.

Undoubtedly the poor air increased the severity of several pulmonary diseases, including asthma and pneumonia. Perhaps second only to Pittsburgh in smoke pollution at the opening of the twentieth century, Chicago gained a national reputation for its terrible air, but it also became a leader in regulation. In the early 1900s, a movement to force railroad electrification focused on the Illinois Central's waterfront line and kept the smoke issue in the news. Still, air quality did not significantly improve until coal use began to decline after World War II.

In the early 20th century, private, single-family, two and three flat residence were instructed to burn their waste in the small concrete garbage incinerators that the city constructed in the alleys behind each property as a solution to growing landfill issues. Garbage trucks would open the cooled incinerators and shovel out the ashes. Larger incinerators used by schools, hospitals, and apartment buildings.

In 1959 the city created the Department of Air Pollution Control. The new department investigated all types of emissions and suggested regulations for several previously ignored sources of pollution, including burning refuse and leaves. 

Public concern for air quality heightened after a 1962 disaster killed hundreds of London residents, and by 1964 Chicago received more than six thousand citizen air pollution complaints per year. As with the early movement to control smoke, the new activism focused on the potential negative health effects of impure air. Not surprisingly, the Loop, the Calumet Region, and northern Lake County, Indiana, were the most polluted districts in the metropolitan area.

In 1967 the U.S. Public Health Service determined that only New York City's air was more polluted than Chicago's. Impelled by citizen activism and new federal regulations in the 1970s, the city attempted to control the largest polluters, including the massive South Works steel plant. Even as these efforts began to reap benefits, however, the continuing suburbanization and auto dependence of the metropolitan area meant that auto emissions would plague the city for decades to come.

By the 1990s, a decline in heavy industry and effective regulation of auto emissions combined to significantly improve Chicago's air. Chicago no longer ranked among the nation's most heavily polluted cities.

By David Stradling
Edited by Neil Gale, Ph.D.

The Chicago River.

The Chicago River.

The Evolution of the Skokie Lagoons.

The Skokie Lagoons are a nature preserve on the Skokie River that extends from Glencoe to Winnetka and is owned and managed by the Forest Preserve District of Cook County (FPDCC). Within the system are seven inter-connected lagoons totaling 190 acres that are surrounded by floodplains and uplands. Water flows from north to south through the Chicago Botanic Garden into the Skokie Lagoons and south to the north branch of the Chicago River. The lagoons have a long evolutionary history going back to Pleistocene age continental glaciation.

The North Shore uplands, lowland marshes, ravines, and Lake Michigan are all products of the last ice age. About 14,000 years ago, global warming caused the Laurentide icecap to retreat, leaving Glacial Lake Chicago (more than 60 feet above the present Lake Michigan). The glacier also left a topography of lake border moraines (low hills) separated by valleys and marshes that now include the Des Plaines River and the west fork (through Glenview), middle fork (through Northfield), and east fork or Skokie River of the north branch of the Chicago River. As lake levels fell, extensive wetlands developed in the valleys; the largest (approximately 20 miles long and ¼ to 1 mile wide) was the Skokie Marsh. To the east, the Highland Park Moraine, deposited by the Wisconsinan Glacier, separated the Skokie Marsh from Glacial Lake Chicago, now Lake Michigan.

Flooded Winnetka 1924.

Ridge Avenue in Winnetka lies along the crest of the Highland Park Moraine that slopes gently east and west. Glacial meltwater flowed eastward into Lake Michigan through stream valleys cut into the moraine clay deposits. In the marshes to the west, a diverse wetland plant community developed, including marsh grasses and wild rice that supported a robust community of fish and mammals and was also an important stop-over for migratory waterfowl. Woolly mammoths and bison were also known to be residents of this region. It is said that Potawatomi Indians called the marsh the Kitchi-wap choku (CheWab Skokie on early maps) that roughly translates to “great marsh.” Since the area was subject to flooding, the first European settlers took a cue from the Potawatomi and used the land primarily for hunting and fishing.

Frank Windes, Winnetka Village Engineer from 1898 to 1940, reminisced about the marsh of his childhood in a talk to the Masonic Club in 1933:

There were great flocks of wild geese, ducks and wild swans. In the wet woodlands were to be found snipe, plover, woodcock and partridge. In the summer the plover, killdeer, bobolink, meadow lark, marsh wren and many of the waders were found in great numbers. Coon, mink, rabbits, muskrat and weasels were found, and we had great fun hunting with our old muzzle-loading shotguns. It was bare of trees, except for a few straggling willows and a wooded island or two; it was very wet most of the year; and now and then large tracts of “floating bogs” dangerous to walk across in flood times… The wild flowers grew in great profusion. Pond lilies were found in some of the ponds, wild strawberries, grapes, elderberries, cherries and plums grew in the bordering woods and meadows and on the “islands.”

Fishing was easy, according to Windes:

As small boys we would build two small dams across the Skokie stream. We would wade in the stream and beat the water with sticks, scaring the fish between our 2 dams. After we had some 20 to 30 good sized bass, pickerels, catfish and perch enclosed, we would close the dam, and then shovel out the fish, and everyone in town had a fine mess of fresh fish. The skating was wonderful. We could use iceboats, and skate all the way from Winnetka to the Wells St. Bridge in Chicago.

In the late 19th century, floods and mosquitoes were a chronic problem in the Skokie Marsh. Settlers dug drainage channels in sections of the marsh in order to expand “useful land” for grazing and farming. These attempts to improve the land had a negative consequence. Peat deposits from the newly-drained marsh regularly caught fire, blanketing neighbors with dense smoke.

Flooding continued and in 1884, the Skokie Ditch was constructed from the Skokie Marsh, eastward along Willow Road, through Indian Hill and Kenilworth to Lake Michigan. Legal opposition and loss of funding killed the project before it could be dug deep enough to fully drain the marsh.

Two decades later, Frank Windes formulated plans for turning the swampy Skokie Marsh into a lagoon system and presented them to Daniel Burnham and the Chicago Plan Commission for inclusion in the 1909 Plan of Chicago. Burnham said he was “many years ahead of the game; wait, someday this will be taken up; not now young man.” It wasn’t until 1933, after a half-century of unsuccessful attempts to “drain the swamp” that President Franklin Roosevelt approved the creation of the Skokie Lagoons as a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) project along with seven others in Illinois. Winnetkan Harold Ickes, FDR’s Secretary of the Interior, is credited with the development of the project.

Plans, Development of the Skokie Lagoons, Forest Preserve of Cook County.

CLICK MAP TO VIEW IN FULL SIZE.

The FPDCC had been buying up land in and around the marsh with the intention of flood control and the creation of a waterfowl refuge and recreational area. About 4 million cubic yards of earth were excavated and landscaped by more than a thousand workers. It was the largest CCC project in the United States. 

Looking north from Willow Road Bridge the month the lagoon project began, July 1933.

The plan—completed in 1942—includes lakes, floodplains, connecting channels, flood control dams, and perimeter ditches to divert stormwater around the lagoons.

In 1968, the Chicago Botanic Garden was carved out of the north section of the Skokie Lagoons between Dundee Road and Lake Cook Road. Designed by landscape architect John O. Simonds, the Botanic Garden includes nine islands and 60 acres of water. Owned by FPDCC and managed by the Chicago Horticultural Society, it is a world-renowned living plant museum with 25 display gardens surrounded by four natural habitats.

Although peat fires were eliminated and flooding was reduced, by 1979 problems with siltation of the lagoons and untreated sewage spurred FPDCC to new action. The FPDCC and the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission implemented a plan to divert treated wastewater around the lagoons. In addition, over one million cubic yards of sediment were dredged from the lagoons between 1988 and 1993.

Following the dredging, 40 tons of invasive carp were removed and native and sport fish restored to the deeper (up to 12 feet) and cleaner lagoons. Fishermen are now a common sight at the Willow Road dam and boaters regularly enter the lagoons at Tower Road.

Today, the biggest threats in the more than 540 acres of floodplains and uplands in the Skokie Lagoons are invasive plants: overstory trees and garlic mustard in the floodplains, buckthorn in the uplands, and tall perennial reeds in the diversion ditches. Although peat fires have been eradicated, dead trees in the uplands are becoming a fire hazard. FPDCC and Chicago Audubon Society volunteers have been actively working to rid the area of buckthorn and garlic mustard, clear brush, and restore native plant species including grasses, sedges and wildflowers.

The Skokie Lagoons have transformed marshes into ponds and parkland, eliminated peat fires and greatly reduced the mosquito problem. But new homes built on land that was once marsh flood-plain still flood occasionally. In an effort to better control flooding, the Village of Winnetka is considering construction of a storm sewer system consisting of an eight-foot-wide pipe that would extend east to Lake Michigan—an underground version of the Skokie Ditch.

The evolution of the Skokie Lagoons is not complete. The construction of levees and dikes on the Mississippi River for flood control and navigation resulted in new problems that may not have been anticipated by the early planners. As exemplified by the Chicago Botanic Garden, close attention to detail and plenty of funds will assure the vision of sustainability.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Olson Memorial Park, Waterfall and Rock Garden, Chicago, Illinois. (1935-1978)

Olson Rug Company was established in 1874. The manufacturing mill was located in Chicago at Diversey and Crawford Avenues (now Pulaski Road). When the raw material was scarce during WWII, people would send in their old wool rugs, rags, clothing, etc., and Olson Rug would turn them into a beautiful area rug. The family-owned business was "the place" to buy rugs for many years.

Alongside the factory was the renowned Olson Memorial Park. Walter E. Olson built the approx. 2-acre park in 1935. The project took nearly six months to complete. About 800 tons of stone and 800 yards of soil were used for its construction. Approximately 3,500 perennials, along with numerous species of pines, junipers, spruces, arborvitaes, and annuals, starkly contrasted the area's industrial surroundings. Olson Park's stunning rock garden, duck pond, and 35-foot waterfall replicated a waterfall on the Ontonagon River in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

The park was intended for his employees to bring nature to the factory grounds. Olson's idea for the park came from his summer home in Little St. Germaine, Wisconsin, where nature in the north woods created a peaceful setting, and he thought he would do the same for employees and the crowded Avondale community well.

The opening of the park took place on September 27, 1935, what was then American Indian Day in Illinois (the fourth Saturday of September), as well as the 100th anniversary of a treaty that resulted in the final expulsion of the Pottawatomies, Chippewas, and Ottawas across the Mississippi, and included a symbolic gesture deeding back the area of the park to the Indians.

During the first Sunday after its dedication, Olson Park attracted as many as 600 visitors per hour. This theme was kept up with visiting Native American chiefs performing war dances in authentic period clothing periodically at the park.

As Olson Rug Park became more elaborate, it was opened to the public free of charge. A trailer was set up to serve hot dogs, lemonade, and other staples. The word spread. By 1955, over 200,000 people a year were visiting the park.

OLSON PARK AND WATERFALL

The park's decor changed with the season. At Christmas, there was the obligatory Santa. At Easter, the obligatory Easter Bunny. Halloween saw a floodlit moon hanging over the waterfall, complete with a witch on a broomstick.

In some years, the great lawn featured a re-creation of McCutcheon's famed cartoon "Injun Summer." [1]

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Marshall Field & Company bought the Olson Rug plant in 1965 and converted it into a warehouse. They kept the park that was adjacent to the plant operating until 1978 when the waterfall became too expensive to repair. It would have cost over $100,000 ($472,000 today) to fix it, and it's not clear how much the park costs to operate and maintain each year. Fields decided to level the park and paved it over to create a parking lot for employees and customers. Since the park was on private property, Fields had the right to do whatever they wanted with it without interference from the city. 

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.

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[1] "Injun Summer" was first published in the Chicago Tribune, written by John T. McCutcheon, and printed in the September 30, 1907 newspaper. McCutcheon won a Pulitzer Prize in 1932, the first Tribune staff member to receive journalism's coveted award.

VISIT OUR McCUTCHEON SOUVENIR SHOP

Thoughts About "Injun Summer."

One day in the early fall of 1907, cartoonist John T. McCutcheon found himself groping for inspiration for a drawing to fill his accustomed spot on the front page of the Tribune. He thought back to his boyhood in the 1870s in the lonely cornfields of Indiana. "There was, in fact, little on my young horizon in the middle 1870s beyond corn and Indian traditions," McCutcheon recalled later, "It required only a small effort of the imagination to see spears and tossing feathers in the tasseled stalks, tepees through the smoky haze..."

That "small effort of imagination" became McCutcheon's classic drawing, "Injun Summer." It was accompanied by a lengthy discourse with the plain-spoken charm of Mark Twain. The cartoon proved so popular that it made an annual appearance in the Tribune beginning in 1912 and ran in hundreds of other newspapers over the years.

Kline Creek Farm, a Living History Farm and Museum in West Chicago, Illinois.

Take a step back in time. The Kline Creek Farm, in the Timber Ridge Forest Preserve, shows what life on a working farm in the 1890s was like.in DuPage County, Illinois.

Stroll through restored farmstead structures and meet the historically-costumed interpreters operating this living-history farm using the tools and techniques of the past. Activities and events at the farm re-create the seasonal rhythms that have governed farm life for centuries.

Kline Creek Farm presents 19th-century farm activities, such as baking, canning, planting, harvesting, sheep shearing, and ice cutting among other activities.

The farmhouse was the center of domestic activities and today contains original artifacts and reproductions that enhance its homelike atmosphere. Depending on the time of year, staff and volunteers plant heirloom fruits and vegetables in the kitchen garden, tend to the orchard, work in the wagon shed or cure sausages in the smokehouse.

Percheron workhorses help plant and harvest crops of corn, oats, and other small grains; and resident livestock, such as the farm’s Southdown sheep, Shorthorn and Angus cattle, and chickens, occupy the farm’s coop, barn, fold, and pastures.

Beekeeping is also a long-standing tradition at Kline Creek Farm. Since 1984 volunteer beekeepers have managed the farmstead’s apiary by caring for the bees, extracting and processing honey, and leading educational programs and tours that focus on the honeybee’s role as a primary pollinator for two-thirds of all U.S. crops.

Kline Creek Farm

Forest Perserve District of DuPage County

1N600 County Farm Road, West Chicago, Illinois.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

The Famous Sulphur Springs Resort in the City of Creal Springs, Illinois.

The City of Creal Springs, Illinois is located in southeastern Williamson County, on the north slope of the Shawnee Hills. It currently has a population less than 550 people living within the city limits of one square mile. In the 1920s, the population soared to just over 1,000 residences.

Blue Avenue, Looking East, Creal Springs, Illinois. (circa 1895)

Some say that a Frenchman, named Philippe Renault, was the first white man to visit the area arriving approximately 1720. The Le Grand Trace was a road laid out by the French when Assumption mission and Fort Massac (Metropolis, Illinois) were built in the early 1700s.

Sulphur Springs was a small French trading settlement and later it became a small hamlet or community on the blaze-marked [1] Le Grand Trace trail. The Le Grand Trace ran between Kaskaskia and Fort Massac. When John Reynolds’ (Governor of Illinois 1830-1834) family came to Illinois in 1800, the route was plainly marked with mile posts burnt on trees and painted red. The road crossed the Saline at Ward’s mill, passed Bainbridge, and crossed Big Muddy at Vancil bend.

Passengers in a Wagon on Blue Avenue, Creal Springs, Illinois. (circa 1910)

During those early years, it was known by it's French name, Eau Mineral (Mineral Waters) before getting the name of Sulphur Springs. Other knowledgeable historians give early settlement credit to the Spaniards. It is believed that a party of four traveling east may have camped at the old stone fort in Saline County. Legend goes on to say that a Spanish cannon filled with gold coins is supposed to be buried near the old fort. Visit there and you could find the strange carvings on an old rock which are supposed to indicate the location of the still missing and buried cannon of gold.

An old surveyor, Nimrod Perrine, once documented that the oldest house in Williamson County was a Frenchman 's hut at Eau Mineral or Sulphur Springs. This structure was still in use during the booming resort era of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. 

Creal Springs, Illinois, Grade School. Circa 1906

The first American cabin was built by Gideon Alexander in 1822. The Sulphur Springs post office was built in 1846, followed by a blacksmith, several merchants, and three doctors within a very short period. Two of the doctors operated drug stores where they dosed their patients with sulphur water.

A few years later Edward Creal and Dr. Curtis Brown began to exploit the curative natures of the springs on Creal's property. Within only four years the curative nature of these spring waters had enticed several hundred health seekers to visit his location. As more people came, a new community developed and prospered thereby causing Sulpher Springs to be relocated and renamed.

In the early 19th century, Lusk's Ferry Road was an important road that connected Fort Kaskaskia with Lusk's Ferry on the Ohio River. The original survey maps of Illinois show a short segment of this road south of Creal Springs, in Johnson County. This old road most likely ran from Marion through Creal Springs before ascending to the summit of the Shawnee Hills. The modern road running toward the southeast into Creal Springs may be the old road. The road leading south out of Creal Springs toward Lake of Egypt links into the Wagon Creek Road, which leads to the segment mapped in the original survey. Modern maps also show traces of an older road that ran south out of Creal Springs along a less direct line.

The Rebecca Family Creal Springs, Illinois. Circa 1900s

The route south out of Creal Springs lead to a difficult passage over the Shawnee Summit. There was an easier, though longer, zigzag route east to New Burnside, southwest along modern U.S. Highway 45, and then back east to Reynoldsburg. Creal Springs may at one time have served as the junction of these alternative routes.

The village was incorporated August 10, 1883 shortly after a post office was obtained by transfer of the Sulphur Springs post office and moved by Postmaster Allison Clark with a change of name February 8, 1883. Sulpher Springs became a subdivision of the new town.

The Creal Springs Seminary, later known as the Creal Springs College and Conservatory of Music, was an educational institution in Creal Springs, Illinois, from 1884 to 1916. 

It was headed by Principal Gertrude Brown Murrah, a graduate of the Mount Carroll Seminary in Mount Carroll, Illinois. The school was built as a three-story frame building on a five-acre site on the north edge of town, on land acquired from the Creal family by Mrs. Murrah and her husband Henry Clay Murrah. It opened on September 22, 1884, and was chartered in August 1888 by the State of Illinois as Creal Springs Seminary Company.

The school was originally planned to be for girls only, but due to high demand from boy students it opened as coeducational. At the end of the first 12-week term, there were a total of 59 students enrolled. The faculty had six members including Mr and Mrs Murrah. The program was divided into primary, preparatory, college-level and music departments.

In January 1894, the name of the school was changed by charter from Creal Springs Seminary to Creal Springs College and Conservatory of Music. Both bachelor's and master's degrees were provided. The faculty at this point numbered 15, with approximately 100 students enrolled. In 1902, the library had 400 volumes. The faculty and students jointly published a quarterly magazine called the Erina Star.


The school closed on December 24, 1916. Mrs Murrah continually struggled to reopen the school until her death in 1929. The building was demolished in 1943.

The Creal Springs Illinois College.

The Creal Springs Illinois College.

Between 1890 and 1903, Creal Springs was one of the most popular spots in the Midwest. Four daily trains served the town. Special trains were announced to start on the first of May. Round trip tickets were good for the entire season.

Postcard of the Creal Springs, Illinois, Train Depot. (circa 1900)

Over Head Bridge, Creal Springs, Illinois. 1913

Creal Springs developed into one of the leading health spa and recreational centers in the mid-west. People traveled for hundreds of miles to experience the changes in their health that was advertised with such vigor and promises. These promises can not be totally vouched for even today.

Many selected Creal Springs because of the comparable low cost when looking at the competing cities like Hot Springs, Arkansas. Room and meals were available at the going rate of only $2.00 per day in the hotels, including the very popular Ozark Hotel operated by Pete Stanley in the heart of the wells area.

Ozark Hotel, Creal Springs, Illinois. Circa 1900

The Ozark Hotel on Fire in 1917. It was rebuild (see photo below), but then closed permanently in 1928.

Bath House and Spring Number 3.

Mineral Well at Ozark Hotel, Creal Springs, Illinois. Circa 1910s

Stanley, a shrewd business man from Paducah, Kentucky, felt that if you offered great rates on the basics, people would spend more on the extras including his concessions, game room and bar. Of course, when Stanley prospered, so did the towns-people.

The local stores thrived on their sales to those visiting for the treatments, and the livery stable was busy supplying hacks and horses for the patients to take long leisurely rides in the lush countryside.

John Morray's General Store Exterior ↑ and Interior, ↓ Creal Springs, Illinois. Circa 1910s

Although the community prospered, and the town folk raked in the benefits, in 1903 the Baptists and Methodists teamed up to get the community voted dry. Ironically, once the liquor was gone, so were the health spa seekers. For several years following the Dry Vote, many patrons purchased their water by mail, until the business finally died.

Assembly of God Church, Creal Springs, Illinois. 1913

Today, their is little evidence of the wells except for the sign in the park and a few hand operated hand pumps labeled with the cures they are believed to have along with a warning that the water may not be safe for consumption.

Fred West Motor Company, Dodge-Plymouth, Creal Springs, Illinois.

There is still talk around town of those old stories about who was cured for what with the water from the wells. In the hay day of those twenty years in prosperity, advertisements were usually testimonials from patients about how they had been cured from their suffering. 

The sign in the park still identifies each well and its curative nature:

Spring No. 1: Diseases of the stomach and digestive organs

Spring No. 2: Liver and Kidney

Spring No. 3: Beauty Spring; Blood and Skin, Nerves, and Brain Tonic

Spring No. 4: Diarrhea: Astringent, Cures for all Children Problems

Spring No. 5: Tranquilizer and Laxative

Spring No. 6: Cure of Catarrh (Google it), Inflammation of Tonsils, swelling or running sores. Its like cannot be found in this country, if in the world.

Other wells were present but today these are the only ones which can be identified as having a specific location.

Surviving WWII Veterans Coming Home to Creal Springs, Illinois.

During early 1996, a joint effort by the Creal Springs Park Board, Creal Springs City board, Illinois State Health Department, and Frank McDannel, of the Williamson County Economic Development Board resulted in a matching grant being secured from the State Tourism Department to open three wells in our local "Wonder Water Park." The matching funds were quickly raised from interested people of the area.

A master long range plan has been funded by the city for the historic Mineral Springs Water Park. Gazebos are being built to cover each of the three usable wells. A flowing fountain is planned for well #3, which is famous for its beauty enhancement qualities, and is known as the "Beauty Spring." Each well, except #8, has been tested for its medicinal and curative values. These claims range from helping cure diseases of the stomach and digestive organs, to blood, skin and brain disorders.

The Creal Springs City Park is host to a number of activities including the annual "Wonder Water Reunion," held the second week of September. They have the Little Miss & Mister Contest, the Junior Miss & Mister, Miss Creal Springs, and the Baby Boom Pageant. The reunion also includes a carnival, food, a cake walk and arts and crafts.

Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.

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[1] Blaze-marking, Trail blazing, trailblazing or way marking is the practice of marking paths in outdoor areas with blazes for others to follow or to find your way back. In frontier times, trails were blazed by cuts made into the bark of a tree by ax or knife, usually the former, burned in marks and/or paint (usually red in color) were also used. In general, blaze marks follow each other at certain, but not necessarily exact distances between the blazes, and mark the direction of the trail.