An interesting article on the development of a Chicago urban legend which helped justify the Deep Tunnel project.
HOW DID AN 1885 FLOOD OF LITTLE CONSEQUENCE BECOME AN EPIDEMIC THAT ‘KILLED’ 90,000 CHICAGOANS?
BY LIBBY HILL. Libby Hill is author of “The Chicago River: A Natural and Unnatural History,” Lake Claremont Press (2000). She teaches in the department of geography and environmental studies at Northe
July 29, 2007SATURDAY, AUG. 1, 1885, WAS a sweltering Chicago summer day, but relief was on the way. The weather forecast promised a cooling breeze that would allow Sunday churchgoers to attend “without their fans.”
On Aug. 2, the breeze came, but it was accompanied by 6 1/2 inches of torrential rain in 24 hours. The basement of the new opera house was swamped. Waiters at the Boston Oyster House kept serving until around 4 p.m., when the tables began to float and employees were put to work operating water pumps in the basement. The Chicago River, polluted by runoff from the Stock Yards and sewage from the city’s 750,000 residents, surged into Lake Michigan.
