THE AUDUBON BULLETIN 
1936 
The Chicago Beach: In Memoriam 
By W. J. BEECHER 
Long before she acquired fame as the great mid-western focus 
of transportation and commerce, Chicago was hard at work earning 
it on other grounds. Ages ago a mighty flood of birds, streaming 
northward to reclaim the land given up by the glacier, naturally con- 
verged at this geographical crossroads, following our. oak ridges, 
dunes and beach up the west shore of the lake. Inevitably this was 
to become one of the great flyways and highways of the continent. 
Generations of aboriginal men have fared along this broad pass; 
a race of mound builders has written its brief history in the shifting 
sand and vanished with its fabulous civilization. Across the span 
of years many have known the peculiar charm of this low flung shore: 
the dazzling spread of dune and strand, reaching in lonely emptiness 
to the level horizon; the blue immensity of water and sky, shadowing 
together to the verge of the world. And often under its spell, trav- 
elers have succumbed to an illusion of green woodlands with running 
streams, where there was only sand-—grim hallucination of the mirage. 
But never in those forgotten days—unless it be the fabled vision of 
the dying Marquette—did anyone dream that a mighty city would 
some day rear its ivorine colonnade here in monumental tribute to 
the aspirations of men; no one ever really supposed that the limit- 
less span of beach would at length be limited. 
Our early naturalists knew the soul-filling loneliness of the beach. 
Many a starlit night, atop some low dune, their driftwood fires stabbed 
fitfully at the fathomless abyss; many a dog-tired evening they were 
lulled to sleep by the contralto quaver of the black-bellied plover and 
the mournful cry of the willet, drifting up with the soothing pulse 
of the Inland Sea. 
Little of all that remains today. The growing city drove its piles 
and heaped its rocks down all the long reach of shore—a barrier at 
last against the raids of the spuming lake. Far back from the pres- 
ent shore, extended in places a half-mile lakeward, traces of dunes 
still exist; haughty residences stand on solid ground where breakers 
used to flash. 
Within the city may be found, at the foot of Montrose street, the 
last remnant of beach suitable to the needs of our rarer shorebirds 
—nor is this part of the original shore. By some whim of Nature, 
the crude forces of construction and the inherent property of the in- 
