Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 April 1896 — The Ship Canal Project [ARTICLE]

The Ship Canal Project

Representative Hatch Gives The Scheme a Notable Posh; , Last Thursday the Senate passed the joint rt so-u» ion for the appointmeat of a commission to make a preliminary survey and estimate the cost of a ship canal from the lower shore of Lake Michigan to the Wabash River. The resolution provides that the Secretary of War shall appoint a board of three officers of the corps of eng>ners of the army to select the most practicable route for a ship canal connect the lake with the head of navigafloe of the Wabash River, and make a preliminary survey, with plans, specifications and approximate cost of such <ns«l. This hoard shall act under the direction of the Secretary of War. The resolution appropriates $25,000 to carry out these provisions. The hoard is required to report what effect, if any, the proposed canal would have on the water level of the great lakes or any of them. This is an old project, which Congressman Hatch, the working member from this district, has revived, and which has been several times, of late years, discribed in this paper. Several surveys have been made for such a cinal. The first was ordered by Lewis Cass when he was Secretary of War, Under President Jackson, and in 1831 Mr. Stansberry, a United States engineer, made a report In 1875 another survey was made by Major Gillespie of the engineer corps. He showed that there is a fall of nearly seventy feet from Lake Michigan to the head waters of the Wabash River, and that the proposed waterway could be constructed at comparatviely small cost, owing to the physical condition of the country. It is claimed that such a canal would shorten the waterway from Lake Michigan to the Gulf of Mexico nearly 400 miles, incomparison with that of the great Illinois canals The canal it built, will probably follow the Kankakee river for about 8 or 9 miles, where it borders Jasper county and leaving the river at a point about north of Dunnville, pass through the northeast corner of this county.