Brian and Joyce of the Youtube channel BeHistoric have a fascinating episode about the “Great Chicago Portage”. They layout the history from the Ice Age to the Native American peoples through to modern times.

In this video documentary (#89), we explore the great Chicago Portage, used for hundreds or even thousands of years by indigenous people and then later by European explorers and traders, as a passage between the Great Lakes watershed and the Mississippi River watershed. Indeed, this subtle feature, an artifact of the Ice Age, may be the very reason for Chicago’s existence. The portage evolved to become the I&M Canal, which was then overtaken by railroads, then the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, then the Adlai Stevenson Expressway – creating one of most ancient and continuous use passage corridors in the United States.