Originally published: Lake Claremont Press, 2000

Chronology -- Introduction -- Part 1. Prehistory through the eighteenth century -- Location, location, location -- Geological foundations: bedrock and ice -- The Chicago River: branches and forks -- The natural Chicago River: animal, vegetable, and mineral -- Tribal land -- Passages and treaties: on the path to a canal -- Part 2. The nineteenth century -- The Illinois and Michigan Canal -- Redesigning the harbor -- Early commerce and the river -- The North Branch settlement -- The Chicago River: clean stream to open sewer -- The I&M Canal: shipping channel to open sewer -- Toward the Sanitary and Ship Canal: from 1880 to shovel day -- Building the channel that saved Chicago -- Part 3. Twentieth century -- Reconnecting the city and the river -- The North Shore Channel and the North Branch -- The ascendance of federal authority -- Straightening the South Branch -- Transforming the Skokie Marsh -- MWRD, modern sewage treatment, and TARP -- Citizens and their river -- Part 4. Early years of the twenty-first century -- MWRD and disinfection -- Invasive carp: the case of the Sanitary and Ship Canal -- The river runs through it: greening the watershed -- The evolution of a riverwalk -- Retrospective -- Appendixes -- A: Organizations -- B: On the water -- Fish species collected by MWRD in the Chicago Area waterway system since 1974

"A social and ecological account of the Chicago River, beginning with its geological foundations and extending to the present, the book tells how a sluggish waterway emptying into Lake Michigan became central to the creation of Chicago as a major transportation hub. Originally published by Lake Claremont Press in 2000 and reprinted by SIU Press in 2016, this revised edition updates the story."--Provided by publisher