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Beneath the Water Line
ChicagoUnderwater5 stops3 look-around scenes
An underwater route through the Chicago River and the lakefront. The same policy history the walking tours trace on the street is written into the water, in reversed currents, buried tunnels, industrial sediment, and a shipwreck you can see from the shore.
The look-around scenes on this tour are labeled test captures while real underwater footage is gathered.
Stop 01 / Main Stem / Michigan Avenue
Surface to 20 ft
The River That Flows Backward
In 1900 the Sanitary District of Chicago finished the canal that reversed the Chicago River, pulling it away from Lake Michigan and sending it toward the Mississippi watershed instead. The point was blunt. The city drank from the lake and dumped its waste into the river, and the river carried that waste to the drinking water intakes. Rather than stop polluting the river, Chicago re-engineered which way it ran. Under the Michigan Avenue bridge the current still obeys that decision. Every drop moving past the bridge piers is evidence of how far the city would go to protect some neighborhoods from what it was willing to leave in the water near others.
360 videoTest capture. A labeled synthetic panorama stands in until real footage is uploaded.
N 000°
Drag to look around
Look around / drag the frame, 360 video
On the record
- 01Reversed in 1900 by the Sanitary District of Chicago
- 02The canal sent the river toward the Mississippi watershed
- 03Built to keep sewage away from the lake drinking water intakes
Sources
- 01Encyclopedia of Chicago, Chicago River entry
- 02Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, district history
- 03Libby Hill, The Chicago River, a Natural and Unnatural History, 2000
Stop 02 / South Fork / Back of the Yards
0 to 12 ft
Bubbly Creek Still Bubbles
The South Fork of the South Branch served for decades as the open drain of the Union Stock Yards. So much packinghouse waste settled into the channel that gases from the decomposing sediment rose to the surface in a constant simmer, which is how the creek got its name. Upton Sinclair described it in The Jungle in 1906. The yards closed in 1971. The bubbles did not. The creek bed still holds a thick organic layer from the stockyard era, and federal and local agencies have studied dredging and restoration for years. It is the clearest place in the city to see how industrial harm outlives the industry, and whose neighborhoods were asked to absorb it.
On the record
- 01Named for gases rising from stockyard waste in the sediment
- 02Described by Upton Sinclair in The Jungle, 1906
- 03Subject of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers restoration studies
Sources
- 01Upton Sinclair, The Jungle, 1906
- 02U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Bubbly Creek ecosystem restoration study
- 03Encyclopedia of Chicago, Bubbly Creek entry
Stop 03 / Lake Michigan / Drinking water intakes
30 to 35 ft
The Cribs Miles Offshore
The round structures on the horizon off the lakefront are intake cribs, the mouths of the city's drinking water system. Engineer Ellis Chesbrough sent the first tunnel two miles out under the lakebed in the 1860s because the water at the shoreline was already fouled. Later tunnels were dug by hand under the lake, dangerous work that killed dozens of laborers, including in a fire at a crib construction site in 1909. The water that reaches every tap in Chicago and many suburbs still enters here, far enough from shore to stay ahead of what the city put in the water closer in.
360 photoTest capture. A labeled synthetic panorama stands in until real footage is uploaded.
E 090°
Drag to look around
Look around / drag the frame, 360 photo
On the record
- 01Intake cribs sit miles offshore over tunnels under the lakebed
- 02The first two mile lake tunnel opened in 1867
- 03A 1909 fire at a crib construction site killed dozens of workers
Sources
- 01Encyclopedia of Chicago, Water Supply entry
- 02Chicago Department of Water Management, system history
- 03Chicago Tribune archive coverage of the 1909 crib fire
Stop 04 / Morgan Shoal / 49th Street
5 to 25 ft
A Shipwreck in Sight of Hyde Park
Morgan Shoal is a limestone reef lying just off the shoreline between roughly 45th and 51st Streets, one of the few places where the lake bottom rises close enough to the surface to be dangerous. In 1914 the steamer Silver Spray grounded on the shoal, and on calm days its boiler still breaks the surface within sight of the same Hyde Park blocks the walking tour covers. The shoal also shaped the shore itself. This stretch resisted the landfill expansion that manufactured most of Chicago's lakefront, which is why the revetment here looks rougher and older than the parkland north of it.
360 videoTest capture. A labeled synthetic panorama stands in until real footage is uploaded.
W 270°
Drag to look around
Look around / drag the frame, 360 video
On the record
- 01A limestone reef close offshore between about 45th and 51st Streets
- 02The steamer Silver Spray grounded on the shoal in 1914
- 03The wreck's boiler is still visible above calm water
Sources
- 01Chicago Park District, Morgan Shoal framework planning documents
- 02Chicago Tribune archive coverage of the Silver Spray grounding, 1914
- 03Hyde Park Historical Society accounts
Stop 05 / Deep Tunnel / South Branch
150 to 300 ft below grade
The Tunnel Hundreds of Feet Down
Reversing the river did not finish the job. In heavy storms the combined sewers still overflowed into the river and sometimes back into the lake and into basements, and the flooding fell hardest on low lying working class neighborhoods. The answer, begun in the 1970s and still under construction, is the Tunnel and Reservoir Plan, better known as the Deep Tunnel. More than 100 miles of tunnels bored through bedrock far beneath the river system catch the overflow and hold it for treatment in reservoirs like McCook. It is one of the largest public works projects in the country, and almost nobody who lives above it has ever seen it.
On the record
- 01Construction began in the 1970s and continues today
- 02More than 100 miles of tunnels bored through bedrock
- 03Storm overflow is held in reservoirs like McCook for treatment
Sources
- 01Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, Tunnel and Reservoir Plan
- 02U.S. EPA materials on combined sewer overflows
- 03Encyclopedia of Chicago, Flood Control and Drainage entry
The same history runs at street level. Walk it stop by stop.
All tours