Developing the I & M Canal

Ana Koval: Executive Director, Canal Corridor Association.

Thank you, Jerry. I want to share with you today some of the other work of the Canal Corridor Association, some of our efforts in heritage tourism along the rest of the I&M Canal. We have been working to increase the number and quality of I&M Canal Corridor tourism sites while strengthening the thematic links between these sites.

Our goals in heritage tourism include:

Developing of a consistent story line.

Developing a regional image, and…

Using these tools to link together our sites so that we have the critical mass of sites necessary to attract the lucrative heritage tourist.

First, telling the story. Telling the story is important. It is really what people want to know —what is important or special about this place? In our case, we decided we wanted to tell a story of a passageway.

Visitors to The I&M Canal walk in the footsteps of people who have traveled an ancient passageway carved by the glaciers. This corridor has been a passageway for migratory birds. Native Americans first used the waterways for trade. They shared their routes with French explorers who became the first to dream of building a canal. Father Marquette and Louis Joliet first recognized this wetland as the easiest link between the Mississippi and the Great Lakes in 1673.

Over 150 years later, constructed between 1836 and 1848, the Illinois & Michigan Canal further enhanced this passageway with a water route capable of moving large quantities of heavy goods. The I&M was the last link coming some twenty-three years after the Erie Canal. And since the canal was finished in 1848, other water routes, the railroads and eventually highways all were built in the passageway.

We reinforce the passageway story by telling the stories of the real people who have lived and worked in the passageway.

A steel silhouette of William Gooding stands near the canal at Lockport, Illinois. Mr. Gooding was the chief engineer for the canal and you can see him there with his canal plans in his hand. Mr. Gooding worked for the 12 years it took to complete the canal and then once the canal was opened was fired for showing favoritism towards some of the canal contractors.

Elsie Armstrong stands with her eight sons in a plaza between the canal and one of our canal towns — Morris. Elsie came to the Illinois frontier in 1831 leaving her drunken husband in Ohio. Three of her sons eventually worked on the canal, several became prominent citizens in various professions in Grundy County, and two served in the state legislature. There you can see them as they arrived in Morris ages three through 19.

In another era, the Marx Brothers worked along the canal. They once owned a chicken farm near the canal but failed as farmers. There you can see Harpo and Groucho on their way to work at the Rialto Theater in Joliet in the 1930s. The Marx brothers are part of a series of silhouettes in Joliet. Along the bicycle route in Joliet, which connects two portion of the canal trail, are silhouettes of eight men and women of different ethnic groups and different occupations going to work in the many industries that grew up along the canal and the subsequent transportation routes.

Mr. Gutierrez who arrived in Joliet with his wife and grandmother in 1919 and went to work driving spikes on the EJE Railroad is there. And meet Mary Setina, a Slovenian immigrant who lived in a St. Joseph’s neighborhood known as Slovenian Row and owned a store there.

Please come and visit the I&M Canal and meet 21 full-size, Cor-Ten steel silhouettes along the canal and at a few of the sites adjacent to the canal.

We are working to develop a regional image and link the many different sites in the corridor together for the visitor. We developed a logo for the area. This is not our organization’s logo but is a logo for the many sites within the corridor. We are using this logo on gateway signs that identify the region as you enter it on major roads and on driving tour signs, individual interpretive signs, mile markers, and on printed materials.

Our first challenge has been to help visitors find their way to our sites and between our sites. We have 63 cultural, natural, and historic sites that are open to visitors along the 100-mile corridor. Part of the area is industrial, given that industry grew up along the canal, and part is rural. A 75 mile driving tour route has been established taking visitors through ten “canal towns,” past fifteen access points to the canal and past many other places to stop and visit, places such as state parks, restored prairies and natural areas. The driving tour signs are being augmented with printed materials — a map/brochure, audio tapes or a CD which you can listen to in your car as you drive the route, and downloadable information on our web site.

Another way we have been promoting a regional image is on our trails. Currently there are 80 miles of bicycle and walking trails along the canal. Parts of our canal are owned and managed by different units of government. We are in the process of unifying our towpath trails with a system of mile markers. These V-shaped markers have Cor-ten steel posts and two unique panels. Each panel has a version of our boy and mule logo and tells the visitor how far they are from the origins of the canal in Chicago; what is the name of the trail they are on; directional information – how long to the next attraction; and a fact about the canal. Let me give you an example of a canal fact. “A canal boat was about the size of a city bus and would hold 90 people or 100 tons of cargo.”

Another way we are working to develop a regional image along the trail is through trail access signs. For example, one of our signs includes the logo again, some background information about the passageway story, two maps, one of the region and the other of the local surrounds, a silhouette, and information about this location. These signs work to answer two questions in the visitors’ minds — what is special about this place? and what else is there to do here today?

In 1998 as part of the Sesquicentennial Celebration of the completion of the canal, we sponsored an exhibit and book titled Prairie Passage. Two hundred contemporary black-and-white photographs by Edward Ranney made up the exhibit. The book included the photographs and essays about the region both helping to create a regional identity. Fifty thousand people saw the exhibit in three different venues in Chicago, Lockport and Springfield. Five thousand copies of the book help maintain the regional identity.

The Canal Corridor Association is also working on thematic linked interpretation at a variety of individual sites. The story of each site is told in the context of the larger passageway story line and three or four regional themes.

At the Santa Fe Prairie the story of an undisturbed prairie and the people who worked to document and save it is told in the context of the canal and railroad. The reason the prairie was never farmed was that it was owned by the Santa Fe railroad.

Here are the silhouettes of Floyd Swick and Dr. Robert Betts. Mr. Swick was a longtime educator at the Morton Arboretum and co-author of the book Plants of the Chicago Region. Dr. Betts, a professor of biology, worked his entire life to save the Santa Fe Prairie and other important natural areas.

The Canal Corridor Association is also spearheading an effort to create a self-sustaining tourism attraction at the rural western terminus of the I&M Canal. There are no canal boats left on the I&M and we have been developing a project which would include putting replica boats in the water near Lock 14 and allowing visitors to take a short ride along one of the most scenic sections of the canal. The project has been studied for its potential to attract visitors and has been formulated to increase its economic viability while giving visitors an authentic experience that cannot be duplicated just anywhere.

The bad news is there is no silver bullet. All of our projects have multiple funding sources — usually a mixture of private and public funding.

Often, the initial funding or seed money for our projects comes from the private sector. Private foundations, individuals interested in quality of life issues, the environment, or cultural and historic preservation provide the funding for the first stages of project development. These sources allow us the flexibility to create projects that are out of the box. Once the project concepts are better defined and a partnership has come together, then public sector money can be secured.

For example in the initial stages of our wayfinding project, several local foundations funded the concept plan and then the prototyping stage of the project. It is very difficult to secure public funds until you have a tangible project to build with a definite budget and plans and specifications complete. We have found that by mixing private and public funds we have been able to be more creative in the initial research and development of a program or project. This has allowed us the freedom to develop projects that are much more thoughtful than the standard interpretation solution, or a typical park design or education program.

Many of our projects have been funded with state tourism grants that need to be matched 50-50. In some cases the local unit of government has sufficient discretionary funds to match the state dollars. In other cases we look for private dollars such as foundation money or corporate sponsorships to match the public sector money. Each project, or really each piece of the project, requires a different approach. This approach requires you to be opportunistic and flexible.

It also requires a lot of time spent writing grant applications and proposals and making presentations. Please come to visit us along the Illinois and Michigan Canal. Thank you Kevin for the invitation to showcase some of our efforts in heritage tourism. Good luck in your work here in Buffalo.