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Chicago Portage
The Chicago Portage was an ancient portage that connected the Great Lakes waterway system with the Mississippi River system. This connection provided comparatively easy access from the mouth of the St. Lawrence River on the Atlantic Ocean to the Rocky Mountains and the Gulf of Mexico. The approximately six-mile link had been used by Native Americans for thousands of years during the Pre-Columbian era for travel and trade. During the summer of 1673 members of the Kaskaskias, a tribe of the Illinois Confederation, guided French explorers Louis Jolliet and Father Jacques Marquette, the first known Europeans to explore this part of North America, to the portage. A strategic location, it became important to European exploration in the Midwest, resulting ultimately in the foundation of Chicago. The Portage crossed waterways and wetlands between the Chicago River and the Des Plaines River, through a gap in the Valparaiso Moraine. In 1848, the water divide was breached by the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Illinois And Michigan Canal
The Illinois and Michigan Canal connected the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. In Illinois, it ran from the Chicago River in Bridgeport, Chicago to the Illinois River at LaSalle-Peru. The canal crossed the Chicago Portage, and helped establish Chicago as the transportation hub of the United States, before the railroad era. It was opened in 1848. Its function was partially replaced by the wider and deeper Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal in 1900, and it ceased transportation operations with the completion of the Illinois Waterway in 1933. Illinois and Michigan Canal Locks and Towpath, a collection of eight engineering structures and segments of the canal between Lockport and LaSalle-Peru, was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1964. and Portions of the canal have been filled in. Much of the former canal, near the Heritage Corridor transit line, has been preserved as part of the Illinois and Michigan Canal National Heritage Corrid ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pre-Columbian Era
In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era, also known as the pre-contact era, or as the pre-Cabraline era specifically in Brazil, spans from the initial peopling of the Americas in the Upper Paleolithic to the onset of European colonization of the Americas, European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage in 1492. This era encompasses the history of Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Indigenous cultures prior to significant European influence, which in some cases did not occur until decades or even centuries after Columbus's arrival. During the pre-Columbian era, many civilizations developed permanent settlements, cities, agricultural practices, civic and monumental architecture, major Earthworks (archaeology), earthworks, and Complex society, complex societal hierarchies. Some of these civilizations had declined by the time of the establishment of the first permanent European colonies, around the late 16th to early 17th centuries, and are know ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Niagara River
The Niagara River ( ) flows north from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario, forming part of the border between Ontario, Canada, to the west, and New York, United States, to the east. The origin of the river's name is debated. Iroquoian scholar Bruce Trigger suggests it is derived from a branch of the local Neutral Confederacy, referred to as the ''Niagagarega'' people on several late- 17th-century French maps. George R. Stewart posits that it comes from an Iroquois town named ''Ongniaahra'', meaning "point of land cut in two." The river, occasionally described as a strait, is approximately long and includes Niagara Falls. Over the past 12,000 years, the falls have moved roughly upstream from the leading edge of the Niagara Escarpment, creating a gorge below the falls. Today, the diversion of the river for electricity generation has significantly slowed the rate of erosion. The total elevation drop along the river is . The Niagara Gorge, downstream from the falls, includes the N ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lake Chicago
Lake Chicago was a prehistoric proglacial lake that is the ancestor of what is now known as Lake Michigan, one of North America's five Great Lakes. Formed about 13,000 years ago and fed by retreating glaciers, it drained southwest through the Chicago Outlet River. Origin The city of Chicago lies in a broad plain that, hundreds of millions of years ago, was part of a great interior basin covered by warm, shallow seas. These seas covered portions of North America from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. Evidence of these seas is found in the fossils of coral, such as those unearthed in Illinois quarries at Stony Island Avenue, Thornton Quarry, and McCook, Illinois, or at 18th Street and Damen Avenue in Chicago. Evidence may also be found in the fossils in the Niagara limestone bedrock found throughout the Chicago area and extending all the way to Niagara, New York. Much later, the polar ice cap crept four times down across the continent, covering the region with ice ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wisconsin Glaciation
The Wisconsin glaciation, also called the Wisconsin glacial episode, was the most recent glacial period of the North American ice sheet complex, peaking more than 20,000 years ago. This advance included the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, which nucleated in the northern North American Cordillera; the Innuitian ice sheet, which extended across the Canadian Arctic Archipelago; the Greenland ice sheet; and the massive Laurentide Ice Sheet, which covered the high latitudes of central and eastern North America. This advance was synchronous with global glaciation during the last glacial period, including the North American Glacier#Classification_by_size,_shape_and_behavior, alpine glacier advance, known as the Pinedale glaciation. The Wisconsin glaciation extended from about 75,000 to 11,000 years ago, between the Sangamonian Stage and the current interglacial, the Holocene. The maximum ice extent occurred about 25,000–21,000 years ago during the last glacial maximum, also known as the ''Late W ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ice Age
An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages, and greenhouse periods during which there are no glaciers on the planet. Earth is currently in the ice age called Quaternary glaciation. Individual pulses of cold climate within an ice age are termed '' glacial periods'' (''glacials, glaciations, glacial stages, stadials, stades'', or colloquially, ''ice ages''), and intermittent warm periods within an ice age are called '' interglacials'' or ''interstadials''. In glaciology, the term ''ice age'' is defined by the presence of extensive ice sheets in the northern and southern hemispheres. By this definition, the current Holocene epoch is an interglacial period of an ice age. The accumulation of anthropogenic greenhouse gases is projected to delay the next glacial period. History of research ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lake Chicago
Lake Chicago was a prehistoric proglacial lake that is the ancestor of what is now known as Lake Michigan, one of North America's five Great Lakes. Formed about 13,000 years ago and fed by retreating glaciers, it drained southwest through the Chicago Outlet River. Origin The city of Chicago lies in a broad plain that, hundreds of millions of years ago, was part of a great interior basin covered by warm, shallow seas. These seas covered portions of North America from the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. Evidence of these seas is found in the fossils of coral, such as those unearthed in Illinois quarries at Stony Island Avenue, Thornton Quarry, and McCook, Illinois, or at 18th Street and Damen Avenue in Chicago. Evidence may also be found in the fossils in the Niagara limestone bedrock found throughout the Chicago area and extending all the way to Niagara, New York. Much later, the polar ice cap crept four times down across the continent, covering the region with ice ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Glacial Lakes
A glacial lake is a body of water with origins from glacier activity. They are formed when a glacier erodes the land and then melts, filling the depression created by the glacier. Formation Near the end of the last glacial period, roughly 10,000 years ago, glaciers began to retreat. A retreating glacier often left behind large deposits of ice in hollows between drumlins or hills. As the ice age ended, these melted to create lakes. These lakes are often surrounded by drumlins, along with other evidence of the glacier such as moraines, eskers and erosional features such as striations and chatter marks. These lakes are clearly visible in aerial photos of landforms in regions that were glaciated during the last ice age. The formation and characteristics of glacial lakes vary between location and can be classified into glacial erosion lake, ice-blocked lake, moraine-dammed lake, other glacial lake, supraglacial lake, and subglacial lake. Glacial lakes and changing climate ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Des Plaines River
The Des Plaines River ( ) is a river that flows southward for U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map , accessed May 13, 2011 through southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois''American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language,'' Fourth Edition in the United States US Midwest, Midwest, eventually meeting the Kankakee River west of Channahon, Illinois, Channahon to form the Illinois River, a tributary of the Mississippi River. Native Americans used the river as transportation route and portage. When French explorers and missionaries arrived in the 1600s, in what was then the Illinois Country of New France, they named the waterway ''La Rivière des Plaines'' (River of the Plains). The local Native Americans showed these early European explorers how to traverse waterways of the Des Plaines watershed to travel from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River and its Mississippi Valley, valley. Parts of the river are now part ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chicago River
The Chicago River is a system of rivers and canals with a combined length of that runs through the city of Chicago, including its center (the Chicago Loop). The river is one of the reasons for Chicago's geographic importance: the related Chicago Portage is a link between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi Valley, Mississippi River Basin, and ultimately the Gulf of Mexico. In 1887, the Illinois General Assembly decided to reverse the flow of the Chicago River through civil engineering by taking water from Lake Michigan and discharging it into the Mississippi River watershed, partly in response to concerns created by an extreme weather event in 1885 that threatened the city's water supply. In 1889, the state created the Chicago Sanitary District (now the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, Metropolitan Water Reclamation District) to replace the Illinois and Michigan Canal with the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, a much larger waterway, because the forme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Midwest
The Midwestern United States (also referred to as the Midwest, the Heartland or the American Midwest) is one of the four census regions defined by the United States Census Bureau. It occupies the northern central part of the United States. It was officially named the North Central Region by the U.S. Census Bureau until 1984. It is between the Northeastern United States and the Western United States, with Canada to the north and the Southern United States to the south. The U.S. Census Bureau's definition consists of 12 states in the north central United States: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. The region generally lies on the broad Interior Plain between the states occupying the Appalachian Mountain range and the states occupying the Rocky Mountain range. Major rivers in the region include, from east to west, the Ohio River, the Upper Mississippi River, and the Missouri River. The 20 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jacques Marquette
Jacques Marquette, Society of Jesus, S.J. (; June 1, 1637 – May 18, 1675), sometimes known as Père Marquette or James Marquette, was a French Society of Jesus, Jesuit missionary who founded Michigan's first European settlement, Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, Sault Sainte Marie, and later founded St. Ignace, Michigan, Saint Ignace. In 1673, Marquette, with Louis Jolliet, an explorer born near Quebec City, was the first European to explore and map the northern portion of the Mississippi River Valley. Early life Jacques Marquette was born in Laon, France, on June 1, 1637. He was the third of six children for Rose de la Salle and Nicolas Marquette. The de la Salles were a wealthy merchant family. The Marquette family had been well-respected for many years, as numerous members had served in the military and taken civil posts. Jacques Marquette was sent to study at the Jesuit College in Reims at age 9. He remained there until he joined the Society of Jesus at age 17. Marquette tau ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
