1925 - Part 3 - Across the Continent by Motor Boat (with Evinrude Big Twins)

Lots going on in Part 3!  I wonder where all the photos are that were taken on the cruise.  So few were used here it is a bit annoying.  Somewhere (hopefully) is an archive with the photos but I can't find it.  You can identify the original photos as they have the photo description as part of the image.

The cover of the March 1926 issue :-)

1924

We kept our schedule into St. Louis.  Although most of the morning was consumed making photographs around camp and overhauling our equipment, we got under way at 10:30 in the morning.  The run down the Mississippi was only a matter of 18 miles, aided by a 4 mile per hour current, so that we pulled up in front of the Municipal Landing Barge sharply at noon.  There we were welcomed by the usual delegation of newspaper men and photographers.  After getting properly mugged and reported, we were taken in tow by William H. Dees, Sales Manager for the Canvas Products Company, of St. Louis.  Mr. Dees' firm manufactures the Peerless Auto Tent, which we had found to be a very satisfactory article for motor boat use, and which had been our home during the cruise when we were not actually under way with the boat.

St. Louis riverfront in 1927.

Source: http://maps.slpl.org/ctc.html

We spent that afternoon, and the following day in St. Louis, getting started for Hoboken again about 9 o'clock on the morning of August the second.  

Notwithstanding the fact the Mississippi from St. Paul Minnesota to New Orleans, is a rather sluggish stream, we found the current dragged heavily upon a boat having no greater speed  and engine power than Transcontinental had.    But, we had plenty of headway left after overcoming the current even though we played safe and bucked right up the middle of the steamboat channel which is marked with a veritable fence of buoys and shore day marker targets.  

The run of 18 miles back up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Missouri was made in three hours, ands at one o'clock in the afternoon we tied up at Alton, Illinois, to go ashore for lunch.

It was a tremendous relief to be away from the nerve racking strain of dodging sand bars and snags in the Missouri, and just to have clear water to cruise in was a pleasure we had not known since leaving the Columbia.

While the Mississippi River above the mouth of the Missouri might not be considered clear by persons who are used to streams and lakes of crystal clearness, it is sufficiently clear that the tip of an oar blade is visible about four feet below the surface.

Below the mouth of the Missouri, however, it's quite a different story.  The writer is inclined to share the views of certain geographers who have always maintained  that a grave mistake was made when the Missouri was named as a tributary of the Mississippi.  It has been claimed that the Mississippi really flows into the Missouri, and that the Missouri is one river from the point in Montana where it is formed by the junction of the Madison, Gallatin, and Jefferson Rivers - right straight through to the Gulf of Mexico.  The question will probably always remain debatable, but it is an incontrovertible fact that - there is no Mississippi River below the mouth of the Missouri.  he Mississippi most assuredly loses its identity after the Missouri pours its torrent of silt and mud down to mingle with the waters of the Mississippi.  The Mississippi is swallowed by the Missouri just as the Missouri is swallowed up in North Dakota where it meets the Yellowstone.

(I added the red dashes on top of almost invisible faded out route markings.)

The scenery along the Mississippi, especially on the Illinois side of the river between Alton and the mouth of the Illinois River at Grafton, Illinois, was without doubt some of the most beautiful we had seen since leaving the bad lands of Montana.  Along this portion of the river the shore like terminates at the water's edge in the form of great, rocky, almost perpendicular bluffs.  These rocky formations appear to be very old, much weathered and waterworn, and with patches of vivid green vegetation growing out of the cracks and canyons that break through the rocky walls.  For the first time on this entire cruise we found ourselves on this portion of the run in the company of other motor boatmen.  Motor boats of all descriptions appeared along the river.  Boats bearing such distant ports of registry as Peoria, St. Paul, and Des Moines, indicated that we were not the only outfit doing a bit of long distance travel.

 Traveling on up the Mississippi that afternoon we arrived at Grafton, Illinois, at the mouth of the Illinois River at six o'clock in the evening.

Grafton is a quaint little townof less than a thousand population, but it seems to typify the many little communities that dot the shores of the Mississippi from Lake Itaska to the Gulf of Mexico.

It is one of those villages in which we still find the unspoiled Americanism of two or three decades ago - people who work six days a week, go to church on Sundays, maintain the standards of living that were those of our great grandparents, lead simple wholesome lives, and don't walk up the backs of each other's neck in the present day scramble for the elusive dollar.

It is one of the few remaining towns where the hostelry sells a night's lodging in a nice clean room with a bed and a wash bowl for a dollar, and meals at fifty cents each. At mealtime they load the food onto the tables, go outside and toll the bell - the signal to those who are hungry to come and get it. To one who has spent most of his recent years in the commercial tread-mill of the modern American city, a visit to Grafton or any of the many Graftons along the Mississippi, is deliciously refreshing.

Fourteen years ago the writer canoed down the Illinois River from Peoria to the Mississippi River.  I was at that time a student of biological science at the University of Illinois.  The canoe cruise was made with the joint cooperation of the University  College of Natural History and the United States Bureau of Biological Survey.  It was for the purpose of taking a census of the bird life along the river, and making analysis of the stomach and crop contents of birds to determine their economic relation to agriculture.

Turning the bow of the Transcontinental into the Illinois River in August, 1925, I found a very different river from the stream I had roamed with the canoe in 1911.  The river has been transformed in those fourteen years from one of the most beautiful streams of the entire nation - rich and bird and fish life, to a foul-smelling, filthy, open sewer.  The blame for this condition must be placed squarely where it should go, and that is upon the city of Chicago.  Anyone who travels up the Illinois River today, and sees the condition that the pollution from Chicago's sewage has caused, may righteously accuse the city of slovenliness, greed, selfishness, and an utter disregard for the rights of the people living down the Illinois and Mississippi River Valleys.  

The writer believes that if a representative lot of Chicago citizens could be taken down the river and shown what the city has done, then go back to Chicago and clean house with the city government from cellar to roof, if that might be necessary to accomplish an ending of the imposition the community has inflicted upon its neighbors.  In justice to Chicago, however, it should be stated that steps are now being taken to put a stop to the pollution which the Chicago Drainage Canal has caused the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers.  The task is a complicated engineering task that will require at least five years for realization.

Years ago, someone who was evidently a skillful, paid propagandist, set in motion the theory now widely credited that - running water purifies itself after flowing a certain distance.  But, to anyone who is sufficiently gullible to accept that theory, I would say: Take a look at the liquid pouring out of the Illinois River into the Mississippi.  Nineteen-twentieths of it is said to be pure uncontaminated water from Lake Michigan that flows down the Chicago Drainage canal.  The remaining twentieth is sewage  and the comparatively small amount of water which the Illinois River accumulates from a number of tributaries.  In spite of the fact that the water flows 325 miles from Chicago to the mouth of the Illinois River, it pours into the Mississippi as an evil-smelling mass of filth that is utterly indescribable.  



If that water has purified itself, or is in any way improved by reason of the distance it has flowed one's optical and olfactory nerves would have to be paralyzed to permit him to believe it.  Moreover, if it is fit for human use by the time it mixes with the Mississippi and is pumped up by the municipal waterworks at St. Louis, I'm ready to phone the insane asylum and tell them to get me a room ready.

While the Illinois River is still just as beautiful a stream to the eye as it was fourteen years ago, one needs a gas mask or a clothes pin on his nose in order to appreciate the appreciate its shores.  The boat channel has a minimum depth of about seven feet, and is well buoyed and lighted.  From the standpoint of navigation it was one of the easiest streams we traveled on the entire cruise.  But, at the end of our first day's cruising on the Illinois we were cured of the camp habit.  Instead of attempting to camp in an atmosphere that was nauseating enough during the days, we tied up in front of a town each night.  If the town had more than one hotel we selected the one farthest from the river.

After driving up the Illinois on runs that averaged 50 to 60 miles a day using both motors to increase our speed against the drag of the current, we launched at noon on August seventh at Pekin, Illinois, and the shoved off up the river for Peoria.  A few miles up the river a huge dirigible airship soared down out of the sky and began maneuvering around above us.  Then came a couple airplanes, and later a speedboat down the river.  The speedboat circled us, came alongside, and throttled down.  About that time the idea dawned upon us that all this demonstration was a reception committee from Peoria.  The men in the speedboat beckoned to me to come aboard, so I left Wilton at the wheel and Woodbury at the engines, and made a flying transfer without stopping either boat.  The speedboat contained A. T. Griffith, Peoria yachtsman and editor of Boating, and a group of newspaper men representing the Peoria and Chicago papers.





We then proceeded to the Illinois Valley Yacht Club in Lake Peoria, where the members of the club and its officers gathered around it and insisted that we should make their club our headquarters as long as we could remain with them.  

Much we  would have liked to have availed ourselves of the hospitality of the IVY Club, our sojourn there had to be made as brief as possible.  We were already weeks behind the schedule we had originally planned for the coast to coast cruise.  Weather conditions, however, compelled us to remain a day in Peoria.  The weather had been hot but fair all the way from Kansas City to Peoria.  The day after our arrival in Peoria, about the time we had arranged to leave, it began raining as if the skies were attempting to give the state a year's supply of moisture in one deluge.  So, off went another day from our already badly wrecked schedule.

It is sixty-two miles from Peoria to the entrance of the Illinois and Michigan Canal near La Salle, Illinois, but by getting an early start the next morning, we believed we could be in La Salle that evening. We cruised steadily all day, stopping at Lacon for half an hour for lunch.  Then for the rest of the afternoon we kept Lewis and Clark turning at full throttle without ever being shut down.  

This is the steamboat, Marion.  First boat down the Hennepin Canal in 1907.

About six o'clock we passed the mouth of the Hennepin Canal, the water route between the headwaters of the Illinois and the Mississippi Rivers, and cruised on up the river.  The farther up the stream we progressed the worse the pollution became.  A few miles below Peru, Illinois we found ourselves in liquid that was as black as ink, with masses of black muck floating upon the surface.  

This part of the river is nothing but a flowing cesspool.  Gas bubbles are constantly rising from the bottom, and the aroma is enough to stagger a billygoat.  Until Chicago solves her sewage problem in some less slovenly manner every living thing except the germs of pestilence must shun the Illinois River, especially the upper portions of it.  We traveled through it merely to get from the Mississippi into the Great Lakes.  A portage of this route would have been justified.

Up to this point of the narrative, I have scarcely touched upon the subject of night navigation.  We never made a practice of traveling after dark except when absolutely necessary.  But, in spite of our efforts to eliminate night running we came in for more than our share of it.  We frequently found it necessary to keep going after darkness had fallen in order to get to a landing, a camp site, or some other designated objective.  And, as I think of it now it was the worst nightmare of the entire ocean to ocean journey.  Rapids, snags, sand bars, falling cut banks, rough water, and all the factors that constantly menaced the expedition pale in to insignificance compared with the utter feeling of helplessness and impending disaster which threatened us with every run we ever made after dark.

Cruising through unknown waters, often with swift currents to contend with, and with darkness so black that a blind man at the wheel would have an advantage over us, lacked much of being conducive to peace of mind and security of body.   It was not the disaster we ever met while running at night, but the disaster we constantly and momentarily expected, that caused us discomfort.  It was like walking along on the edge of a cliff blindfolded - and wondering what instant one might step off into space and to destruction.  Every time we ran at night - and without meeting disaster, we solemnly swore we'd never doit again.  But, as surely as we made our vows, it was only to break them, possibly the following day.

Although we had repeatedly sworn off on night cruising, we found ourselves cruising the upper Illinois River in the vicinity of Peru, Illinois, through a night as dark as the proverbial cat.  We scraped the shore several times, dodged a million rocks and deadheads that were either real or imaginary, passed above the twinkling lights of Peru, and thought we detected the entrance to the Illinois and Michigan Canal on the left bank of the river. 

That effort to get into the canal without being able to see it came nearer to ending the transcontinental cruise than any other mishap of the entire journey.  Steering for the faintly silhouetted opening which we believed to be the canal, we ran aground on a slimy mud flat.  Just as we struck, the whole aft end of the cockpit burst into flames with a preliminary gasoline vapor explosion that all but blew us out of the boat.  Instantly the fire began shooting skyward, and it seemed that we were doomed to pile overboard - making for shore the best we could through the filthy water, and leaving the boat and its thousands of dollars' of equipment to the flames. Mr. Woodbury, who was in the stern end of the boat at the time, grabbed the heavy canvas cockpit cover, and chucked it over the fire.  He was wildly tucking the corners over the tongues of escaping flame when I got aft with the Pyrene.  In less time it takes to tell it the flames were out.

Following the flare of the fire the blackness of night seemed tremendously intensified. We rubbed the singed lashes out of our eyes, and began hunting for the cause of the near-disaster with a pocket flashlight.  

We found it in the form of a leaking gasoline line from the main tank amidships.  The fuel had run out on top of the bilge and under the floor grating of the after cockpit.  The swirling vapor of the liberated gasoline had been apparently set off by having made its way into one of the kerosene running lights. 

 The leading gasoline line was closed off at the tank.  We sponged up all the loose fuel we could find, extinguished the running lights, and poled the boat off the mud flat.

Making our way to shore, we landed to discover that the opening we had tried to enter was the Illinois and Michigan Canal - or rather the ditch where the canal used to be.  There was no water in it - nothing but slimy mud, and clouds of mosquitoes swarming over it.   

The mosquitoes drove us back to the boat, where we started the motors, and got under way - but not sure where we were going, or even where we wanted to go.  To all appearances we were in the head end of a blind ally.  The only course open to us seemed to be to go on up the river, attempt to reach La Salle, and there obtain information as to whether we might be able to get through the Illinois and Michigan Canal or not.

Abraham Lincoln was very involved with getting support for this project. See more.

The Illinois ceases to be a navigable river above the entrance to the canal. The current becomes very swift, and all aids to navigation are lacking. Thus we found ourselves battling up the river in total darkness for about two miles until the lights of La Salle came into view. We discerned the dim outline of two bridges, and battled the current under them without hitting anything. Five hundred yards above the second bridge we ran aground on a mud flat and in a field of submerged or semi-submerged stumps. Meanwhile we had noted the river seeming to swing away from the town, and certainly with no indication of going any nearer. Under the circumstances, the only thing sensible thing for us to do was to get off the mud flat and run back down the river to Peru.

Getting off the flat, however, was no easy task.  When we attempted to pole off, the poles went down in the soft black muck of the river bottom without exerting any appreciable push.  

This action dislodged clouds of bubbles from the mud that all but gassed us out of the boat. A ten minute effort with the oars finally got us clear of the mud flat.  We started one motor and began feeling our way down the river.  

We got through the swift waters between the bridge piers again without hitting anything, eventually landing at Peru against a retaining wall that seemed to be the back end of a freight yard.  No sooner were we ashore when we were overhauled by the Irish policeman assigned to that particular beat.  We were glad to meet him.  The officer had heard of us through the press and seemed to feel he'd gain a rare privilege in being able to render even a small service.  He promised he'd let seven varieties of daylight through any prowler who might attempt to molest our boat or outfit.   Then he went to his call box and ordered a taxi for us.

Telephone calls to Joliet and Chicago next morning revealed the fact that heavy rains earlier in the season had caused some breaks in the levees of the Illinois and Michigan Canal.  The canal was dry between Ottawa and the Illinois River - a distance of 15 miles.  The remainder of the canal, from Ottawa to Joliet had a little water in it, but was closed to navigation.  A fifty-foot lock at Joliet; the lock that when in operation handles traffic from the end of the Illinois and Michigan Canal into the Chicago Drainage Canal was hopelessly out of commission.  The superintendent, however, stated that we might attempt to navigate the canal AT OUR OWN RISK.  He also generously offered to instruct all canal employees to lend us every possible assistance.  The superintendent assured us we would find a minimum depth of 20 inches of water between Ottawa and Joliet, which with the Transcontinental draft of 18 inches was sufficient to let us through.  

But, we faced a difficult problem in getting the boat into the canal at all with 15 miles of dry land at the west end of the canal.  There were just two ways this problem could be solved.  One was to portage to the water at Ottawa.  The other was an attempt to navigate up the unnavigable Illinois River to Ottawa, go up the Fox River to the point where it flows under the aqueduct that  carries the Illinois and Michigan Canal over the Fox River, and then manhandle the boat into the canal from the Fox River.

We chose the latter method for the sole reason we were out to cross the continent by water, with only one portage.  We had already made one unanticipated portage of three miles around the Cascade Rapids in the Columbia River, and no desire to make additional portages whether they might be long or short.  

So, with this far from rosy prospect ahead of us we set out from Peru, Illinois, that Sunday morning, August ninth, to attempt getting up the Illinois River, and into the Fox River at Ottawa.  The pollution of the river above Peru is utterly indescribable.  The water is as black as India ink, full off masses of floating sewage, with a stench that assails to high heavens.  This is the river, once one of the most beautiful and lovely streams in the state which now flows past the Illinois State Park, and around the base of Starved Rock - the cradle of history of the commonwealth of Illinois, La Salle would turn over in his grave, hold his nose and shudder, if he could see the river today that he so valiantly explored.  

These two postcards are from roughly 15 years before this story. 

 Undoubtably, too, the valiant Indians who starved to death on the summit of Starved Rock rather than surrender to their enemies, would prefer death by starvation to seeing their once glorious domain transformed into a cesspool of filth that white men have made of it.  

A few miles above Peru, Woodbury consigned breakfast to horrors of the polluted river, while Wilton and I gagged and bore it, attempting to get some measure of physical relief by tying wet towels over our mouths and noses.  Here, Wilton, who was forever experimenting with mechanical improvisations, turned his sun visor eye shade upside down under his nose.  He claimed it deflected the rising gas from the river away from his nostrils.  Although he wore it that way until we reached Ottawa, and declared it a success, my own opinion is that it formed an eddy where an eddy was least likely to be desired.




In spite of the horrible pollution of the river we found Starved Rock festooned with people, the shores in the vicinity lined with automobiles, and excursion boats thronged with people whose desire to visit this birthplace   of state history was as strong as their stomachs.

We encountered very swift water around the base of Starved Rock, and a mile above it came to a rapid where we could barely move against the current.  Nowhere did we find more than 20 inches of water, and more often it was difficult to find sufficient depth to keep Transcontinental off the bottom.  The bed in the river in the vicinity is nothing but rock, and when we grounded, as we frequently did, it was usually to lose a shear-off pin, or knock a propeller out of shape against the rocks.  It is 18 miles from Peru to Ottawa by way of the unnavigable river, we put-putted into the Fox River at Ottawa about four o'clock that afternoon.  Although we went aground several times in attempting to get up the Fox River to the Illinois and Michigan Canal aqueduct crossing, it was such a relief to get into clean water that going aground on a sand bottom was a mere detail.  

BELOW: 

DETAIL OF UNDERSIDE OF RAIL AND CANAL, SOUTH SIDE OF WEST END - 

Illinois & Michigan Canal, Fox River Aqueduct, Ottawa, La Salle County, IL

Source: Library of Congress

Arriving at our destination for the day, I found it impossible to recruit the necessary men to attempt juggling Transcontinental out of the Fox River and into the canal.  It being Sunday every able bodied man in town seemed to be out on holiday.  Monday morning, however, with the aid of Mr. Brown, canal toll house keeper, we got a crew of men together, and be shear brute strength awkwardness yanked the boat out of the river, yo-heaved-it up the sixty foot embankment and set it down in the canal.

The Illinois and Michigan Canal is 63.6 miles in length, and in this distance are eleven locks.  Due to the canal being officially closed to navigation, the keeper at Ottawa could not assure us we'd get lock service unless we provided it ourselves.  The same thing applied to the numerous low bridges that span the canal between Ottawa and Joliet.  He promised us, though, that he'd get busy on the phone, and endeavor to round up as many of the bridge and lock keepers as possible.  We found later he had fair success with the lock keepers, but very little with the bridge tenders. We took down the bows, and removed everything removable to give the boat the lowest possible clearance under the bridges.  Then, as luck would have it, the two tenderless bridges that we failed to clear sufficiently high to let us under by loading a few rocks aboard the boat to depress her hull.  

We found the lock keepers on the job at the first four locks and got through the dilapidated old wooden structures with a minimum of delay.  But we found the fifth lock deserted.  Inquiries about the neighborhood revealed the lock keeper had motored off to Joliet, and there was no telling when he would return.  None of us had ever had any experience in operating a lock, but the job didn't seem to appear past the mastery of ordinary human intelligence, so we went to work to lock ourselves through.  We got the lower gate open, the boat into the lock, then the sluice gates open above.  When the water level failed to rise, we discovered that the water was running out of the rickety lower gate as fast as it ran in from above.  

Thereupon I borrowed a hammer and a few nails from a nearby farm house, fished several driftwood boards out of the canal, and nailed the boards over the leaks in the lower gate.  With the worst of the leaks partially stopped the water in the lock began to rise.  Half an hour later we still lacked six inches of having the levels equal in the lock and in the upper canal.  The water was going out of the lower end so fast that the lock level would rise no higher, and the pressure from above made it impossible to open the upper gate.  After all efforts to open the gate had failed, the farmer from whom I had borrowed the hammer and nails, brought a block and a fall.  Then with all hands tugging on the rope we managed to pry the upper gates open.  The two water levels equalized almost immediately, and we got the boat of the lock.  But, before leaving we were careful to close the upper gate again.  We didn't want to take a chance on  letting the whole canal run out if the lower gate collapsed, as it appeared to be in grave danger of doing at any minute.

From Ottawa to Lock No. 6 the Illinois and Michigan Canal for a distance of 34 miles, is fed by a number of small creeks and streams that eventually flow to the Illinois River.  This portion of the canal is therefore clean water - the first clean and odorless water we'd been in since leaving the Mississippi, with the exception of our little two mile run in the Fox River.  Just the pleasure of being in clean water again was ample compensation for offsetting the other difficulties we experienced in the canal.  

But, a cruel surprise awaited us at Lock No. 6.  There we found the lock keeper on the job, with the lower lock gate open.  We drove right into the lock - and instantly became aware of where the water used on that portion of the canal came from.  Mirable dictu - it was like driving from clean water into a cesspool.  And the worse luck - it was a case of remaining in the boat while we were locked over, or attempting to climb out up the slime smeared walls of the lock.  A real description of that locking couldn't be printed.

Lock No. 6 -VIEW OF SOUTH SIDE OF LOCK WITH NORTH LOCK WALL AND LOOKING NORTHEAST - Illinois & Michigan Canal, Lift Lock No. 6   Source: Library of Congress 

VIEW OF WEST SIDE OF LOCK TAKEN FROM DOWNSTREAM LOOKING EAST;
LOCK TENDER'S HOUSE TO THE LEFT -
Illinois & Michigan Canal, Lift Lock No. 6, Source: Library of Congress

The remainder of the Illinois and Michigan Canal into Joliet contained the same variety of fluid as Lock No. 6.  Thus, we negotiated the last few miles as we did the upper Illinois River - with wet towels over our mouths and noses, and Wilton wearing a wet towel plus his inverted sun visor.  We arrived at Joliet about seven o'clock that evening.  Leaving the boat in care of the collector of the port, we hailed a taxi, and told the driver to take us to the best hotel that was the farthest away from river and canal.

The following day we got an early start because we knew we faced the ordeal of getting over the unworkable lock at Lockport.  

Part 3 to be continued...

____________________________

The Illinois and Michigan Canal opened in 1848. Its function was largely replaced by the wider and shorter Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal in 1900, and it ceased transportation operations with the completion of the Illinois Waterway in 1933.

This is a fun historic map of the states our boys covered. 
Go HERE and poke around on a bigger version at the  David Rumsey Map Collection. 
Notice the little size slider hovering on the map to make it bigger when you go there.