LaSalle County Historical Society
Six buildings on the I&M Canal
101 E. Canal St, Utica, IL
Then
Period photograph forthcoming
The Canal Warehouse — the centerpiece of this six-building campus on the I&M Canal — was a working transshipment station when LaSalle was the western terminus of the canal that connected the Mississippi to the Great Lakes. Steamboats from New Orleans unloaded molasses, sugar, coffee.
“The Canal Warehouse — the centerpiece of this six-building campus on the I&M Canal — was a working transshipment station when LaSalle was the western terminus of the canal that connected the Mississippi to the Great Lakes.”
Canal boats from Chicago brought lumber, stoves, eastern fashions. Today the campus holds the most important regional archive in the Illinois Valley — including the Native American collection from the Zimmerman Site, just across the river.