A History of the Chicago Portage: The Crossroads That Made Chicago and Helped Make America

By Benjamin Sells

Seven muddy miles transformed a region and a nation

This fascinating account explores the significance of the Chicago Portage, one of the most important--and neglected--sites in early US history. A seven-mile-long strip of marsh connecting the Chicago and Des Plaines Rivers, the portage was inhabited by the earliest indigenous people in the Midwest and served as a major trade route for Native American tribes. A link between the Mississippi River and the Atlantic Ocean, the Chicago Portage was a geopolitically significant resource that the French, British, and US governments jockeyed to control. Later, it became a template for some of the most significant waterways created in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The portage gave Chicago its name and spurred the city's success--and is the reason why the metropolis is located in Illinois, not Wisconsin.

A History of the Chicago Portage: The Crossroads That Made Chicago and Helped Make America is the definitive story of a national landmark.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0810143909
• ISBN13: 9780810143906
• Release Date: August 2021
• Publisher: Northwestern University Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.9" x 8.9"