Passage to Chicago: A journey on the Illinois & Michigan Canal in the Year 1860 takes the reader on a special kind of journey: an in-depth, illustrated look at life on a fictional canal boat, the Prairie Star, as it travels to Chicago just before the Civil War. You will experience the daily lives of those who lived and worked on the canal boats, as well as in the towns they traveled through. Hop on board with the canalers, mule boys, lock tenders and their families, miners, quarrymen, shopkeepers, and others, to witness their world of more than 150 years ago.

Exhibition guide on the traveling photography exhibition and subsequent book titled Prairie Passage, by Edward Ranney.

This vol. is primarily a bibliography of sources about the canal that runs from Chicago to LaSalle, Ill. Historical information is included.

Visitors to Starved Rock State Park are often struck by the grandeur of its rustic lodge. They marvel at its massive fireplace and hand-hewn logs. Yet few realize that this structure is a tangible reminder of the Civilian Conservation Corps, which in the 1930s provided work for young men left unemployed by the Great Depression. Starved Rock Lodge was one of the biggest projects of the "CCC boys" along the Illinois and Michigan Canal, but it was far from the only one. Working as a team and living in camps from Willow Springs to La Salle-Peru, they built facilities that transformed the old canal into what became the I&M Canal State Trail (1974) and the nation's first National Heritage Corridor (1984). President Franklin D. Roosevelt's nation-wide program preserved the landscape from the ravages of soil erosion, flooding, and deforestation. In the process, the young men built beautiful parks, buildings, and shelters that we use and admire today.