372 ILLINOIS STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



land transportation. The story of its acliievement is 

 Avortliy the notice of the Congressmen who support the St. 

 Lawrence project. 



In the late summer of 1834 a family moved to the region 

 of Bureau Creek (Bureau County, Illinois) from the 

 banks of the Erie and Ohio Canal. The succeeding 

 autumn, a son who had helped construct the canal near 

 the Ohio home, took his gun, and, in his own words, 

 "viewed the country through from Hennepin (on the 

 Illinois River) to the Mississipi^i Elver near Rock Island, 

 and thought it was a natural pass for a canal as there was 

 a depression all the way across with high land on either 

 side. ' ' This reconnaissance led to a more careful review- 

 ing of the region a few weeks later, the interesting of local 

 influence and the agitation for a waterway to connect the 

 big bend of the Illinois River with the Mississippi near 

 Rock Island. Believing that there might be dollars and 

 cents in it, tlie Erie Canal having paid for itself in the 

 ten years just past, local interests financed private sur- 

 veys of the proposed route. The legislature of Illinois 

 was involved in the Illinois and Michigan Canal project, 

 and to this body the matter of extending water trans- 

 portation to the upper Mississippi was carried. Permis- 

 sion for the building of the canal was given but state aid 

 Avas not forthcoming, so the matter was dropped. 



The growth of population near the junction of the 

 Rock and Mississippi rivers made the need for better 

 communication eastward a more urgent one. The canal 

 project was changed to a railroad, and the line of the 

 C. R. I. & P. railroad was put through almost directly 

 over the first surveyed route for the proposed waterway. 

 Interestingly enough the exorbitant freight rates 

 charged by this railway in carrying cargo eastward, and 

 the example of the influence upon rail rates exerted by 

 the Erie and the Illinois and Michigan canals, again 

 brought about agitation for waterway extension from 

 the Illinois to the upper Mississippi. Private and state 

 aid having been previously sought in vain, in 1863 the 

 project was carried before Congress by Senator Hawley 

 of Iowa, where it became noted in succeeding sessions 



