South Side Waterfalls

A while back I took a mini road trip along the canal that runs beside Rt. 55 as you leave Chicago. Early in my trip, I stopped and visited a visitor information center along the canal that had a large selection of tourist maps and brochures. As I'm inclined to in such situations, I grabbed a handful, including a useful map of the 'historic' towns along the canal. When I got back home I eventually looked through the rest of the brochures and discovered a rather interesting pamphlet describing a series of man-made waterfalls along a south side river. It turns out that all the development along the banks of the river was reducing the amount of air in the water, which was killing off all the fishes and whatnot that lived in it. They could've just pumped a bunch of air into the water at various locations along it, but they made the much more pleasant decision to build a series of waterfalls of varying size and shape alongside the river. These not only aerated the water but also created a bunch of rather nice places to visit. And with the pamphlet's help, I eventually went and visited four of these places.

Now, however, with the help of Google Maps, I can give you some idea of what three of these waterfalls look like. The bottom photo is the most interesting to me, because when I visited it looked like it was permanently out of commission. It's nice to see that at least when Google's satellite passed by, it was up and running.

I've included some street information in the Google Maps image grabs, so that my readers, if they're industrious enough, can go visit these waterfalls themselves.