Chicago River, this is your life

1673 Louis Jolliet and Father Jacques Marquette become the first Europeans to discover the Chicago River harbor.

1779 Haitian-American fur trader John Baptiste Pointe DuSable, the first nonindigenous permanent settler, builds a home near present-day 401 N Michigan Avenue.

1803 Fort Dearborn is established at Michigan Avenue and Wacker Drive; it is later destroyed during the 1812 Potawatomi uprising.

1834 Chicago’s first movable bridge—made of logs, with a 60-foot removable center section—connects Dearborn Street.

1850s “The Sands” riverfront stretch from McClurg Court to Michigan Avenue becomes a gambling and red-light district.

1853 Chicago’s first mayor, William Ogden, creates the North Branch Channel as a shortcut between Chicago and North Avenues for river travelers. The land between the channel and the river becomes Goose Island.

1865 Union Stockyards opens, becoming the basis for Upton Sinclair’s 1906 exposé The Jungle. Decomposing animal carcasses—which the stockyards dumped in the river by the millions annually—and metal-plating sludge from nearby factories cause gases to form on the river surface, leading to the nickname Bubbly Creek.

1900 The Sanitary and Ship Canal (South Damen Avenue to Lockport, Illinois) opens, reversing the flow of the Main Stem and South Branch and carrying pollutants away from our Lake Michigan drinking-water toward the Mississippi River watershed.

1908 The Chicago River Marathon, an annual three-mile swimming race on the South Branch, debuts. In 1926 and 1927, Olympian and Tarzan star Johnny Weissmuller wins.

1915 The S.S. Eastland capsizes near Clark and South Water Streets while loading 2,500 Western Electric employee families for a company outing, killing 812 people.

1920 The city’s first double-deck trunnion-bascule bridge opens at Michigan Avenue. In 1922, gangster Vincent “Skimmer” Drucci attempts to flee police by racing his car across it as it’s being raised—but is arrested when he crashes at the south end.

1928–30 To accommodate downtown’s expansion and a new railroad terminal, the South Branch between Polk and 18th Streets is straightened and moved a quarter-mile west.

1929 Civic Opera House (20 N Wacker Dr) completed, originally drawing river water to power set changes.

1962 The city begins the tradition of dyeing the river downtown green on St. Patrick’s Day—originally with fluorescent dye, now with vegetable dye.

1979 Friends of the Chicago River is founded to improve recreational access through waterside parks and walkways.

1992 During construction repairs at Kinzie Street bridge, an abandoned underground tunnel is damaged, flooding downtown basements with 250 million gallons of water. Initial attempts to stem the flood include plugging the crack with mattresses.

1998 The Environmental Protection Agency identifies new fish breeds in the river and credits water-quality improvements.

2006 Friends of the Chicago River debuts a 42-foot by 10-foot “fish hotel,” an underwater floating structure with aquatic plants and shelter for fish, near the State Street bridge.

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