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Book Reviews



I & M Canal



By NANCY C. THORNTON


The Illinois & Michigan Canal National Heritage Corridor: A Guide to Its History and Sources.
Edited by Michael P. Conzen and Kay J. Can.
Foreword by Edmund B. Thornton.
DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1988.
Pp. 337 with index. $50 (cloth).

The History of the Illinois and Michigan Canal is also the history of the State of Illinois," writes Edmund B. Thornton in the book's foreword. After reading the four introductory essays which define the subject matter and limits of the book's extensive bibliography on Canal history and sources, one might conclude that current political and financial wrangling over improvements in Illinois' public transportation systems have their roots back in the Canal days, 150 years ago. After the political maneuvering and false starts surrounding the Canal, the resurgence of interest in it represents a triumph of what essayist Gerald Adelmann calls "persistent local citizen advocacy."

The 60-foot wide Illinois and Michigan Canal was constructed between Summit and Peru, Illinois, from 1836 to 1848. It connected the navigable waters of the Illinois River with those of the Chicago River, linking the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River, and formed the primary basis for the commercial development of Chicago. Today the rivers, two railroads, the Sanitary and Ship Canal and an interstate highway share the same one-half to two-mile wide valley floor as remnants of the Illinois and Michigan Canal. As an affirmation of its importance to the growth and development of the Midwest, Congress designated the upper Illinois Valley as the Illinois and Michigan Canal National Heritage Corridor in August 1984.

Michael P. Conzen and Kay J. Carr are to be congratulated for undertaking this "first true effort to gather together references to all the key source documents and secondary writings on the subject in one bibliographic publication." The bibliography is split into 20 categories and lists under each the major relevant library and archival collections in Chicago, Springfield and the towns along the corridor. However, the editors caution that the lists of entries are not exhaustive. Only three-fifths of the material uncovered in research done in the summer of 1984 was included in the book. Each entry includes such information as author, title and date of publication as well as a code for the collections which hold the work.

The book will succeed in its intention to be "especially useful for professional scholars, researchers, and all who would seek more detailed information on specific topics" if only because no other work of its nature exists. Conzen writes, "Much of the valley's artifactual and documentary history remains to be fully exposed and interpreted in a coherent way. Also much awareness needs still to be raised among residents about the value of saving historical features in the landscape." But the value of this book to the amateur historian such as myself, who is part of the "persistent local citizen advocacy," comes from being able to easily find the best sources on related topics.

The design of the book is its weak point. Topic placement is not presented in alphabetical subject card catalog style. Following current writing standards, the entries are a mixture of boldface, italic and plain type as well as capital and lower case, contained in flush-left or indented paragraphs. The result is a distracting page layout, difficult to scan. The margins are not wide enough for making notes; but, with the book's cost, one is reluctant to write in the margins anyway.

A volume of this type becomes a working notebook, and its other design flaw consists of burying in its middle the code definitions for the abbreviations of the library sources. One is continually thumbing the middle section of the book looking for the abbreviation pages. These important pages should have been color-coded and perhaps plastic-coated as well.

Carr warns that "detailed community histories of the towns [along the corridor] have to be written before we can expect to have a fuller understanding of the significance of the area to American history in general." She adds, "the only missing ingredients are the writers, either lay or professional, who appreciate the value of document and interpret the past for themselves and others and for the future." It will be a challenge for them to use this book, but one that can be met by those who want to preserve the history and develop the recreational amenities of the Illinois and Michigan Canal National Heritage Corridor as has been done with the old canal waterways in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York.

Nancy Thornton, who is special projects assistant at the Lemont Public Library, serves as president of the Lemont Area Historical Society and Musuem. Lemont is one of the original towns along the Illinois and Michigan Canal. Thornton has privately reprinted two books on the Catholic History of the Heritage Corridor and is assembling a bibliographical work of the Lemont area as well as an index to the Illinois and Michigan Canal workers.


May 1989 | Illinois Issues | 34


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