Page 122 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Chicago

120  CHIC A GO AREA B Y AREA

0 Morton 14 miles (23 km) of trails,
Arboretum you can drive through the
arboretum in about 50
4100 Illinois Route 53, Lisle.
Tel (630) 968-0074. £ Lisle minutes via 9 miles (15 km)
(Burlington Northern Santa Fe line). of one-way roads. Open-air
Open 7am–sunset daily. & (discount tram tours are offered daily
Wed). 7 8 0 = h Workshops, (weather permitting).
library. ∑ mortonarb.org Begin your visit at the visitors’
center, located near the
Morton Arboretum is home entrance. The center lists daily
to more than 3,400 types of events and seasonal bloom
trees, shrubs, and other plants information. It also has an
from around the world. Eight excellent bookstore and a
lakes and ponds dot this dining area overlooking a
2.5-sq-mile (6.5-sq-km) outdoor pond. The arboretum’s Thornhill
museum, providing wonderful Education Center (open
picnic settings. weekdays) houses displays St. James of the Sag, burial place of many
Founded in 1922 by Joy about Joy Morton and the canal laborers
Morton of the Morton Salt Morton family. The Sterling
Company, the arboretum’s Morton Library has a wide be of great economic benefit
mission is educational. It range of publications on plants, to the region. It took a century
conducts scientific research as gardening and landscaping, and and a half for their prediction
well as providing informative natural history. It also holds rare to come true, and the loss of
public displays. Collections are botanical books and prints. many – mostly Irish – canal
grouped according to plant laborers to diseases such as
families and habitats, allowing dysentery and cholera, but
visitors to learn about each q Illinois and when the Illinois and Michigan
species’ unique features and Michigan Canal (I&M) Canal opened in 1848, it
to compare related plants. National Heritage did indeed transform the area’s
The arboretum’s Daffodil economy. It also established
Glade is particularly stunning Corridor Chicago as the transportation
in spring. Its Schulenberg From Chicago’s south branch of center of the Midwest.
Prairie, radiant in summer, Chicago River to LaSalle-Peru. As the use of rail to transport
is a pioneering landscape Tel (815) 223-1851. See The History freight became increasingly
restoration begun in the early of Chicago: p17. ∑ canalcor.org popular, however, canal traffic
1960s by Ray Schulenberg. declined. Carrying waste away
The prairie is admired The first Europeans to explore from Chicago became the
throughout the Midwest as the Chicago region – Louis canal’s primary purpose, until
a fine re-creation of this now- Jolliet and Father Jacques the Sanitary and Ship Canal
endangered prairie that covered Marquette – urged, in their 1673 took over this function in 1914.
the region before settlement. expedition report, the building The I&M Canal, with its 15 locks,
The maples are dramatic in the of a canal to connect Lake was abandoned entirely in 1933
fall; the evergreen trees striking Michigan to the Des Plaines and when the Illinois Waterway
in winter. If you do not have Illinois rivers. They believed that replaced it as a connection
time to hike along any of the such a transportation link would between the Great Lakes and
Mississippi River.
Fifty years later, in 1984, the
canal was designated a national
heritage corridor. Today, with
almost 100 miles (160 km) of
multiuse trails running alongside
the canal, the canal route offers
abundant recreational opportun-
ities, from bird-watching to
biking, hiking, and canoeing.
The route passes through more
than 40 towns and cities, sites
of historic buildings and
fascinating museums.
A good place to begin your
exploration is the town of
Lockport, 30 miles (48 km)
southwest of Chicago. During
Lush trees reflected in one of Morton Arboretum’s several lakes the canal’s heyday, this town

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