Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 December 1895 — CHICAGO'S CANAL. [ARTICLE]

CHICAGO'S CANAL.

It la Hard to Grasp the Vaatnese ®i the Undertaking. The drainage canal which Chicago la building between it and Lock port is nearly twenty-nine miles long and is a wonderful undertaking. Work on it ia divided into twenty-nine aections. Given under contract to twenty different and responsible firms, the work on all these subdivisions is in full progress, and on two or three of them—and that in the most difficult rocky part—is already finished. The width of the great trench at the bottom is nowhere less than 110 feet on the first nine sections from Chicago, while on other sections it will be 202 feet, to be reduced again to 160 feet A large part of the excavation has to be made through a solid ledge of limerock, underlying the track of the Desplainee River. The width of the upper edges of the huge ditch will vary from 162 to 305 feet, the former width prevailing only on the ten solid rock sections of the excavations, where the walls are vertical and not sloping down as on the remaining nineteen sub-divisions, which are excavated by digging, shoveling and dredging. The clear water depth will be twentytwo feet. This will be uniform throughout, even at the lowest possible condition of Lake Michigan, which will feed the canal at the rate of 300,000 cubic'feet a minute and later, when the bottom width of the first nine sections shall have been enlarged to 200 feet, at the rate of 600,000 cubic feet of water a minute. From the estimates recently made there will have been removed by 1897, when it is expected the canal will be completed, 40,070,439 cubic yards of earth, or in other words,- nearly two-thirds of the excavation of the newly opened Baltic canal, five-sixths of the Manchester canal, twofifths of the Suez canal and three-tenths of the abortive Panama ditch. Of tho 40,000,000 cubic yards of excavated soil, clay, gravel, broken stone and crushed primeval rock fully 12,000;000 cubic yards ‘alone will belong to the latter class, making the Chicago enterprise a really unique one.

A stroll along the works is highly novel. One sees big dredges, flanked by flying bridges and gigantic scoops, ladling up whole loads of dirt at one sweep. One sees leviathans of machinery expressly invented and built to dispose of the loose stone rubble and blasted pieces of rock along the second half <ft th® “Big Lfltcb.” Under the name of “cantilevers,” they tower like oblique gallows of antediluvian monstrosity over the landscape. loosening, lifting and removing tons of blasted rock with no more exertion than that with which children handle their toys. Along with these and kindred cyclopio devices, there is a whole army train of steam, gas, water and electric motors, together with from 6,000 to 8,000 men, 600 teams, numberless graders, carts and trucks, and finally an array of blasting machinery, needing five tons of dynamite as their daily bill of fare. During one month recently 1,160,616 cubic yards of earth and rock were excavated and the cost of this one month’s work amounted to $695,055. In the beginning the cost of the work was estimated at between $40,000,000 and $45,000,000, but it is now estimated that ®at least $30,000,000 will suffice to complete the work.