HISTORICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ILLINOIS.
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two being practically an extension of the canal) is to furnish slack-water navigation throughout the year. The cost of that at Henry (8400,000) was defrayed by direct appropriation from the State treasury. Copperas Creek dam cost $410,831, of which amount the United States Government paid $62,360. The General Government also constructed a dam at La Grange and appropriated funds for the building of another at Kampsville Landing, with a view to making the river thoroughly navigable the year round. The beneficial results expected from these works have not been realized and their demolition is advocated.
HISTORY. - The early missionaries and fur-traders first directed attention to the nearness of the waters of Lake Michigan and the Illinois. The project of the construction of a canal was made the subject of a report by Albert Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury in 1808, and, in 1811, a bill on the subject was introduced in Congress in connection with the Erie and other canal enterprises. In 1822 Congress granted the right of way across the public lands "for the route of a canal connecting the Illinois River with the south bend of Lake Michigan/' which was followed five years later by a grant of 300,000 acres of land to aid in its construction, which was to be undertaken by the State of Illinois. The earliest surveys contemplated a channel 100 miles long, and the original estimates of cost varied between $639,000 and $716,000. Later surveys and estimates (1833) placed the cost of a canal forty feet wide and four feet deep at $4,040,000. In 1836 another Board of Commissioners was created and surveys were made looking to the construction of a waterway sixty feet wide at the surface, thirty-six feet at bottom, and six feet in depth. Work was begun in June of that year; was suspended in 1841; and renewed in 1846, when a canal loan of $1,000,000 was negotiated. The channel was opened for navigation in April, 1848, by which time the total outlay had reached $6,170,226. By 1871, Illinois had liquidated its entire indebtedness on account of the canal and the latter reverted to the State. The total cost up to 1879-including amount refunded to Chicago-was 89,513,831, while the sum returned to the State from earnings, sale of canal lands, etc., amounted to 88,819,731. In 1882 an offer was made to cede the canal to the United States upon condition that it should be enlarged and extended to the Mississippi, was repeated in 1887, but has been declined.
ILLINOIS AND MISSISSIPPI CANAL (generally known as "Hennepin Canal"), a projected
navigable water-way in course of construction (1899) by the General Government, designed to connect the Upper Illinois with the Mississippi River. Its object is to furnish a continuous navigable water-channel from Lake Michigan, at or near Chicago, by way of the Illinois & Michigan Canal (or the Sanitary Drainage Canal) and the Illinois River, to the Mississippi at the mouth, of Rock River, and finally to the Gulf of Mexico.
THE ROUTE.-The canal, at its eastern end, leaves the Illinois River one and three-fourths-miles above the city of Hennepin, where the river makes the great bend to the south. Ascending the Bureau Creek valley, the route passes over the dividing ridge between the Illinois River and the Mississippi to Rock River at the mouth of Green River; thence by slack-water down Rock River, and around the lower rapids in that stream at Milan, to the Mississippi. The estimated length of the main channel between its. eastern and western termini is seventy-five miles -the distance having been reduced by changes in the route after the first survey. To this is to be added a "feeder" extending from the vicinity of Sheffield, on the summit-level (twenty-eight miles west of the starting point on the Illinois), north to Rock Falls on Rock River opposite the city of Sterling in Whiteside County, for the purpose of obtaining an adequate supply of water for the main canal on its highest level. The length of this feeder is twenty-nine miles and, as-its dimensions are the same as those of the main channel, it will be navigable for vessels of the same class as the latter. A darn to be constructed at Sterling, to turn water into the feeder, will furnish slack-water navigation on Rock River to Dixon, 'practically lengthening the entire route to that extent,
HISTORY.-The subject of such a work began to be actively agitated as early as 1871, and, under authority of various acts of Congress, preliminary surveys began to be made by Government engineers that year. In 1890 detailed plans and estimates, based upon these preliminary surveys, were submitted to Congress in accordance with the river and harbor act of August, 1888. This report became the basis of an appropriation in the river and harbor act of Sept. 19, 1890, for carrying the work into practical execution. Actual work was begun on the western end of the canal in July, 1892, and at the eastern end in the spring of 1894. Since then it has been prosecuted as continuously as the appropriations made by Congress from year to year would permit. According to the report of Major Marshall, Chief of
