was difficult. In 1818 Gurdon Hubbard, then 16 years old and traveling with a “brigade” of voyageurs as an indentured clerk, crossed the Portage from East to West and left an account in his memoirs. They had traveled down to the Portage from Mackinac Island in bateaux, heavy flat-bottomed boats. They traveled down the South Branch of the Chicago River and pulled their boats over the St Lawrence Continental Divide into Mud Lake where the water was deep enough to float them. Then … Other members of the crew carried the boats’ cargo, across the seven-mile-long land trail to the Des Plaines River. Because of his status as clerk of the expedition, by virtue of his ability to read and write, Hubbard was spared this hard work. He went on to describe the hardships of crossing the Portage in its natural state. After a hard day of work crossing the portage, the men camped near the river at the west end of the portage. But their discomfort was not yet over, as Hubbard’s account continues. Development Wagon roads and today's highways As commerce over the portage grew, local entrepreneurs developed services to help travelers using the Portage. One such were the wagon roads that made commerce over the Portage much easier during dry periods. An example is the Ottawa trail that started as a pathway, became a wagon road, and ultimately was paved and became part of US Route 66. Illinois and Michigan Canal The earliest Europeans to cross the Portage saw the potential for a canal dug along the route of the Portage. Louis Jolliet, after his first passage, opined that a canal across “…only a few leagues of prairie..” could link the Great Lakes with the Mississippi Valley. Eventually, Joliet’s vision came to reality in the form of the Illinois and Michigan (I&M) Canal which opened in 1848. The birthplace of Chicago, connecting the East with the West Recognizing the strategic importance of the Chicago Portage, in 1803 the new country of the United States built Fort Dearborn at the mouth of the Chicago River to guard it. In 1848 the opening of the I&M canal allowed water transportation from the mouth of St Lawrence River through Chicago to the Mississippi River and the vast ranch and farm lands drained by it. The population of the City tripled in the next six years. The Chicago Portage, established thousands