4 THE AUDUBON (BULLI Esta 
State Accepts Title to Hennepin Canal 
By Mrs. ALFRED DYKE 
THE ABOVE HEADLINE was copied from our local newspaper for the week of 
July 15. It had been sent to the Bureau County Republican as a special 
bulletin from Springfield, after the General Assembly had passed a law 
authorizing State acceptance of the Illinois-Mississippi Canal (commonly 
known as Hennepin Canal) from the Federal Government. This was an issue 
dear to the hearts of many nature lovers in this area, as well as many fisher- 
men, and I read the news with great satisfaction. 
In this week’s paper, my feeling of complacency was abruptly shattered, 
for an article there stated that much work is still to be done before the 
canal can really belong to our state. Congressional legislation is necessary, 
according to State Representative Orville G. Chapman of Bradford, chair- 
man of the Illinois-Mississippi Canal and Sinnissippi Lake Commission, 
and author of the State Legislation. Representative Chapman is much dis- 
turbed over the general feeling that the matter is settled. He urges each 
one of us to write every one of our Congressmen and President Eisenhower, 
urging the proper legislation. The bill has been introduced in Congress, but 
needs prodding from interested people. 
Much of the activity of our State I. A. S. Meeting in May centered around 
the area in which the canal joins the Illinois river near Bureau, ending a 
104 mile course which begins at the Mississippi river below Rock Island. I 
have no doubt that many of our readers of this Bulletin will be as interested 
as some of us who live nearby. Personally, I feel that the members of the 
I. A. S. can do a great deal to help in the matter, both as individuals and 
as a group. For the benefit of members from other parts of Illinois, I give 
this history of the area which has recently been proposed as a State Park: 
The Hennepin Canal was built between 1898-1908 at a cost of approxi- 
mately $2,000,000. As a child, I lived on a hilltop northwest of Wyanet, and 
I can remember seeing the banks of the canal rising from the excavating 
of the huge cranes, as though giant moles had been working there. Our 
slough was drained into the canal and later (about 1908) our precious fif- 
teen-acre pond was also poured into it. One man who owned most of the pond 
preferred it planted in corn. A popular family in our neighborhood were the 
Frys. Mr. Fry was an engineer who had brought his family from Kentucky 
to live in Bureau county while he operated one of the huge cranes on the 
canal. An old-timer at Hennepin told me of an outbreak of cholera, causing 
the deaths of many Irishmen who had come to help with the construction. 
Now and then, after the completion of the canal, a long rainy spell would 
cause breaks in the banks, really a catastrophe for the local farmers. At 
one place near Wyanet, where the banks widened into a pond, there was 
ice-making every winter. Now there is a fish hatchery nearby. No Fourth 
of July holiday was quite as nice as the ones we spent at the canal acquir- 
ing a few fish, and also some chigger bites, to remind us for a while of 
what a good time we had. My father tells me that when the engineers dug 
so deep for the channel, tree seeds were unearthed of species not very com- 
