Looking South from the John Hancock Building, Chicago, Illinois.
Friday, February 17, 2017
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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| 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.
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Plans, Development of the Skokie Lagoons, Forest Preserve of Cook County.
CLICK MAP TO VIEW IN FULL SIZE.
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| 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.
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.
Thursday, February 16, 2017
Hobo College, 17 East Congress Street, Chicago, Illinois.
To the hobo population, Chicago was known as “Big Chi,” the place where thousands of migratory workers in the early 1900s hopped freight cars for jobs in the nation's harvest fields and logging camps.
Amidst West Madison Street's (skid-row), missions, cheap eateries, bars, and other establishments that catered to the transients' needs, Ben Reitman, dashing physician, reformer, and anarchist, founded a “hobo college” in 1908. There, men of the road gathered to swap stories and listen to lectures on everything from philosophy and politics to personal hygiene and vagrancy laws.
For nearly three decades, the hobo college provided an educational experience to these men and fostered a spirit of fraternity among them.
It seems that the Hobo College had set up shop at many different addresses. In 1937, the Hobo College was located at 1118 W. Madison Street, Chicago, Illinois.
Chicago Tribune Article, April 18, 1916
Chicago's Hobo College Loses Students When Coffee and Doughnuts Cease. There's No Audience for the Lecturers.
Chicago's hobo college has ceased to function (for the season). Warm weather has driven its students out of the city to seek Jobs, and the loafers, who had no real Interest In the college anyway, quit when the lunch was discontinued.
Coffee was the life blood of the college and doughnuts were the stuff upon which it existed. So when coffee and rolls were missing recently at a session of the public speaking class, the doom of the college was sealed.
It's All Over Now.
Three times a week the classes were held in the college at 17 East Congress street. On Tuesdays the Rev. Irwin St. John Tucker instructed them in social economics; on Thursdays Dr. John A. Cousilns taught them sanitation and hygiene, and on Saturdays Attorney George W. Waterman lectured on common law with special reference to vagrancy.
Free coffee and doughnuts were advertised and consequently the sessions of the college were well attended by the down-and-outs, and the "casual and intinerant workers," which is the hobo college name of honor.
The Good Students Vanish.
Mr. Tucker was instructing a class of fifty young people In public speaking planning to send them out through the country to organize the unemployed so strongly that the I. W. W. and A. F. of L. could win all their strikes. The idea was that all the possible strike-breakers would be members of the hobos' union and there would be nobody to fill the places of the strikers.
"The most promising students, those that have energy, have left town to find jobs," Mr. Tucker said, "and only the bums are left. So we discontinued our college until September."
Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.
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| Three hobos sitting under a covered structure in Chicago, Illinois, in 1929 |
It seems that the Hobo College had set up shop at many different addresses. In 1937, the Hobo College was located at 1118 W. Madison Street, Chicago, Illinois.
Chicago Tribune Article, April 18, 1916
Chicago's Hobo College Loses Students When Coffee and Doughnuts Cease. There's No Audience for the Lecturers.
Chicago's hobo college has ceased to function (for the season). Warm weather has driven its students out of the city to seek Jobs, and the loafers, who had no real Interest In the college anyway, quit when the lunch was discontinued.
Coffee was the life blood of the college and doughnuts were the stuff upon which it existed. So when coffee and rolls were missing recently at a session of the public speaking class, the doom of the college was sealed.
It's All Over Now.
Three times a week the classes were held in the college at 17 East Congress street. On Tuesdays the Rev. Irwin St. John Tucker instructed them in social economics; on Thursdays Dr. John A. Cousilns taught them sanitation and hygiene, and on Saturdays Attorney George W. Waterman lectured on common law with special reference to vagrancy.
Free coffee and doughnuts were advertised and consequently the sessions of the college were well attended by the down-and-outs, and the "casual and intinerant workers," which is the hobo college name of honor.
The Good Students Vanish.
Mr. Tucker was instructing a class of fifty young people In public speaking planning to send them out through the country to organize the unemployed so strongly that the I. W. W. and A. F. of L. could win all their strikes. The idea was that all the possible strike-breakers would be members of the hobos' union and there would be nobody to fill the places of the strikers.
"The most promising students, those that have energy, have left town to find jobs," Mr. Tucker said, "and only the bums are left. So we discontinued our college until September."
Compiled by Neil Gale, Ph.D.
1890s Cabin in Giant City, Illinois.
The History of the Dutch Community in Chicagoland.
In the mid-nineteenth century, the middle-to-lower-class Protestant, rural Dutch immigrants who moved to and around Chicago established three distinct communities that recreated the Netherlands' cultural, social, and geographical patterns. The first two were agricultural enclaves: in 1846, near Lake Calumet, Zuid (South) Hollanders founded Lage (Low) Prairie, later known as South Holland; and in 1849, a few miles to the north, Noord Hollanders settled Hooge (High) Prairie, later known as Roseland. The third settlement, just west of the city center, became known as the Groningsche Hoek (Groningen Quarter) as immigrants from the Groningen Province increasingly settled there.
These communities reflected both the provinciality and diversity of the homeland while expressing the strong Dutch attachment to their place of origin and their desire to retain the familiar in their lives. They could not stay isolated for long and were designed as separate and segregated enclaves.
As Chicago grew, Dutch solidarity came under pressure. By the 1880s and 1890s, the crush of immigration from other parts of Europe threatened the Near West Side community. Many Groningen Quarter residents sold their holdings and fled to less congested areas. Some reestablished a community a little further to the west in the Douglas Park–North Lawndale area, while others moved to the newly established Dutch community in Englewood. Still, others left for Bellwood, Maywood, and Summit suburbs to pursue truck farming. At the same time, industrialization took its toll on Dutch autonomy, especially in the Roseland settlement. Industries such as the Pullman Palace Car Company, International Harvester, and the Illinois Central Railroad competed for open land and attracted thousands of Southern European immigrants to the area. Like the West Siders, many Roselanders sold and moved to areas that still afforded a rural setting, particularly South Holland and nearby Indiana. Others decided to remain, accepting and adapting to urban life's new order and flavor.
Between World War I and World War II, competition for living space from newly arrived ethnic groups once again prompted a move for the West Side Dutch, this time to the suburbs of Cicero, Berwyn, and Oak Park. Following World War II, they ventured into the far western suburbs, while many members of the Roseland and Englewood communities joined in the flight from the city by migrating to nearby south and southwestern suburbs.
Despite these migrations, Chicago's Dutch preserved their ethnic identity and promoted cohesiveness through religion, marriage, social clubs, and geographic proximity. Religious beliefs proved the strongest bond. Churches and Christian schools formed the institutional focus and remain hallmarks of the Dutch presence. Most early Dutch immigrants belonged to either the Reformed Church or its rival offshoot, the Christian Reformed Church, though later in the century, Roman Catholic and Socialist Dutch immigrants would challenge the hegemony of these institutions.
Chicago's Dutch earned their livings in numerous ways. Most early immigrants were farmers, first in self-sufficient operations, then as truck farmers supplying the city with fresh produce. General farming gave way to specialized pursuits such as onion and melon raising. Agriculture, however, grew increasingly less important as the city and its industries expanded. Factory work proved attractive to late-nineteenth-century immigrants, who found employment in the Pullman works and the railroads, steel plants, and other industries that moved to the Roseland area. Capitalizing on the explosive growth of Chicago, the Dutch also branched out into service industries. South Siders entered the building trades as independent entrepreneurs, while West Siders' familiarity with handling animals led to jobs as teamsters and refuse haulers. The West Side Dutch dominated the city's commercial refuse business, later expanding into the suburbs. Others sustained local economies, operating small retail shops and providing services for the Dutch communities.
The Dutch reached their high point as a percentage of the population in the earliest stages of their migration. Initially arriving as families, the small nuclei of settlers expanded slowly, and their growth rate fell well behind that of the other immigrant groups, though by 1920, Roseland's Dutch population had increased to approximately 8,750, making it the largest Dutch enclave in the city. Nevertheless, the Dutch accounted for less than 1 percent of Chicago's total population by this time. Twentieth-century immigration from Holland to Chicago has been limited, though the Chicago community remained active into the 1920s, scouting out prospective sites for Dutch settlement in as faraway places as South Dakota and Texas.
Despite slow population growth, dispersion, and apparent assimilation, the Dutch presence in Chicago remains resilient. Pockets of Dutch ancestry still inhabit their traditional spaces, marking their presence with place names, dedicated cemetery sections, churches, and Dutch-supported retirement homes and schools. Trinity Christian College in suburban Palos Heights is a fitting symbol of the continuing Dutch influence. Established in 1959 by members of the Reformed Church community, this nondenominational institution presently houses the Dutch Heritage Center, a library and research facility for Dutch history in the Chicago area. This institution reflects the active Dutch ethnic consciousness that takes pride in its long association with metropolitan Chicago.
ADDITIONAL READING.
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