Come listen to Jon Coleman, the Andrew V. Tackes College Professor of History, uncover what the Kankakee River can teach us!
Where: Multi-Purpose Room (Room 235), Decio Faculty Hall
A hint of what's to come:
It has been a long time since the Kankakee River quickened anyone’s pulse. Sandwiched
between Indiana and Illinois at the southern tip of Lake Michigan, the Kankakee boasts neither a
delta nor a port. The Indiana section of the river was straightened in the early twentieth century.
Locals unlovingly call it “the big ditch.” A forgotten river, the Kankakee conceals the history of
a region and its environmental transformation. It is a case study in the hidden costs of control and
domination. More famous rivers have endured their share of manhandling, but the levees on the
Mississippi or the dams on the Colorado grabbed as much attention as the liquids they pinned. In
the heyday of Midwestern drainage between 1890 and 1920, the waters of the Kankakee spurred
debates over economic progress and ecological preservation. Ardors cooled, however, as
recollections of the old river faded. The Kankakee offers a lesson in tangled phenomenon of
wetland destruction and memory loss. It shows what happens when aggressive improvement robs
a river of its stories.
Originally published at environmentalhumanities.nd.edu.