The Calumet Feeder Canal was a short

canal Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered channels built for drainage management (e.g. flood control and irrigation) or for conveyancing water transport vehicles (e.g. water taxi). They carry free, calm surface flow un ...

in Illinois, operated during the mid-19th century. It connected the

Little Calumet River The Calumet River is a system of heavily industrialized rivers and canals in the region between the south side of Chicago, Illinois, and the city of Gary, Indiana. Historically, the Little Calumet River and the Grand Calumet River were one, the ...

to the Illinois and Michigan (I&M) Canal, and ran from

Blue Island Blue Island is a city in Cook County, Illinois, located approximately south of Chicago's Loop. Blue Island is adjacent to the city of Chicago and shares its northern boundary with that city's Morgan Park neighborhood. The population was 22,558 ...

, where the Little Calumet made a hairpin turn toward Lake Michigan, to meet the I&M canal at Sag Bridge. The canal was completed in 1849, and covered . It was one of four feeder canals built for the I&M, the others being the Du Page Feeder, Fox River Feeder and Kankakee Feeder. The canal was surveyed in 1845; construction began in 1848, and was completed late in the winter of 1848-1849. It began to operate in 1849. The Calumet Feeder was constructed principally to provide additional water so that the I&M canal could maintain a navigable depth, but it also carried commercial traffic of its own. The construction of the canal brought significant economic development to Blue Island. As built, the canal was wide at the surface, wide at the base, and deep, with of

freeboard In sailing and boating, a vessel's freeboard is the distance from the waterline to the upper deck level, measured at the lowest point of sheer where water can enter the boat or ship. In commercial vessels, the latter criterion measured relativ ...

. To avoid flooding from the Little Calumet, a

control lock A control lock, guard lock or stop lock differs from a normal canal lock in that its primary purpose is controlling variances in water level rather than raising or lowering vessels. A control lock may also be known as a tide lock where it is used t ...

was installed on the dam at Blue Island. After the city of Chicago began to operate steam engines at the

Bridgeport Bridgeport is the most populous city and a major port in the U.S. state of Connecticut. With a population of 148,654 in 2020, it is also the fifth-most populous in New England. Located in eastern Fairfield County at the mouth of the Pequonnoc ...

pumping station in 1859, the canal was no longer regularly used as a water supply for the I&M. The canal became extremely controversial in Indiana, because of the large dam that had been constructed in order to accumulate sufficient water in the Little Calumet to supply the canal. The water from the dam backed up into Indiana and reduced the value of farmland there. In 1874, when the canal was no longer needed, Illinois breached the dam at Indiana's request. The order for the removal of the dam was issued on April 9, 1874. From that point the feeder ceased entirely to function as a water source for the I&M. The construction of the deeper Calumet Sag Channel in the 1910s drained the remaining water out of the Calumet Feeder. Today very little remains of the canal, apart from some fragments of the original dam near Blue Island.

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Works cited

* {{coord, 41, 40, 5, N, 87, 45, 41, W, region:US-IL_scale:50000, display=title 1849 establishments in Illinois Canals in Illinois Canals opened in 1849 Former or disused inland waterways