Plain folks mark canal's 150 years

The big names never made it yesterday to the little parade inWillow Springs commemorating the 150th anniversary of the Illinois &Michigan Canal.

Gov. Thompson never showed. Adlai E. Stevenson III, his chiefopponent in November, was not to be found. But men akin to thoseimmigrant laborers who built the canal - men with broad backs, bigbellies and callused hands - did turn out for the homey parade downArcher Avenue. And that, the parade organizer said, was enough.

"This canal was dug by human beings like you and me," intonedTom Greenwood, a 78-year-old Cherokee Indian who first envisioned anational park along the historic canal. "Men with strong backs, withthe sweat drippin' off of 'em."

Yesterday's parade, a collection of fire engines, batontwirlers, blues bands, trotting horses and local suburbanpoliticians, moved two miles down Archer, parallel to the canal, fromsouthwestern suburban Summit to Willow Springs. The parade was thefirst step in an effort to generate publicity for plans to redevelopthe canal lands as a national park, with bicycle paths and hikingpaths.

Two years ago, President Reagan and Congress designated the DesPlaines River Valley from Chicago's lakefront to La Salle-Peru as theI&M Canal National Heritage Corridor. That same year, theLegislature created the I&M Canal National Corridor Civic CenterAuthority of Cook County to develop the corridor through its $18million bonding power.

Between 1836 and 1848, 5,000 laborers, mostly Irish immigrants,dug the 96-mile-long canal.

Many historians claim the canal, linking Lake Michigan and theMississippi River, made Chicago, opening the Midwest and West forsettlement. At its busiest, a million tons of cargo was shippedalong the canal in 1888.

But the canal's biggest benefit to the area most likely was thenational advertising it garnered for Chicago, and the workers andsettlers it brought.