Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 October 1907 — LAKES-TO-GULF WATERWAY. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

LAKES-TO-GULF WATERWAY.

Flan* for n Series of Canal* Leading from New York to New Orleans. There will be things doing down in Memphis and the noise W4II be heard throughout the land wheii thiMpg bunch of boomers from all ovcr the middle-Weat gathers there for the second Lakes-to-tbe-Gulf Waterway convention. Special trains will carry President Loose volt and the Governors of twenty-five States to the scone, and with the inspiration of the Big Stick the hundreds of delegates will get busy. According to Kdwin 8. Conway, head of the Chicago delegation, it will be the' beginning of the triumphal march of the canal enthusiasts which he expects to end

this year in the appropriation by Congresa df funds sufficient to meet the pro l ject. The completed plan of the waterway enthusiasts, whicli seems almost like a dream, is a series of canals and dredged channels that will make it possible for a battleship to go from New York by way of Chicago to New Orleans and back by sea to New York again. The map shows the proposed deep waterday route, including, $200,000,000 canal across lower Michigan. This system, when completed, would accommodate a warship for any part of a defensive war scheme. The portrait is that of J. H. Davidson of Oshkosh, Wis., who may be the new leader of the river and harbors committee. The convention is to consider the improvement of all the water courses of the United States, and especially those of tbe middle West. One of the important links in the lakes-to-gulf plan never before mentioned' is a canal to connect Lake

Erie aod I-oke Michigan by cutting across the lower part of Michigan. Surveys hav* been made for a canal to run between a point just below Detroit to a point near the mouth of tlm St. Joseph river on Lake Michigan. These surveys will be presented so the convention. - -j: “-Such a canal,” said Mr. Conway, •Vdonr bo of incalculable advantage to the whole country and to Chicago especially. It would cost about $200,000,000 —a small sura when compared with some railway projects and appropriations of land and money given railroad interest* by Congress. Its chief advantages would be a saving of 500 miles in route between Chicago and Detroit and a gain of two months in the shipping season.” The routing of ships from New York to New York should the gigantic

plan of the waterway men ever be realized," would be: From New York up the Hudson through the improved Erie canal to Lake Erie, down Lake Erie to the contemplated Michigan and ..Erie canal, across Lake Michigan to Chicago, down the backward flowing Chicago river and the sanitary canal to Joliet, through the proposed extension of thTf'canaFfo the* Illinois river, down the Illinois to the Mississippi to New Orleans and around through the gulf and the Atlantic to New York. That is something of a dream, but the canal enthusiasts say it will be accomplished. Chicago delegates see great possibilities in this canal, but they will let the project rest temporarily and join with the whole Mississippi valley in a demand that Congress improve the great river and the Illinois and complete the twenty-eight miles of ditch over the divide from the canal begun by the sanitary district of Chicago to the Illinois river.

LAKES-TO-THE-GULF WATERWAY ROUTE.