Even before she started her research, Libby Hill knew exactly how she was going to begin her book on the Chicago River: with the great plague that followed the flood of August 2, 1885. It was a familiar piece of river history, and it played out in spectacular panorama in her mind’s eye. That Sunday, five and a half inches of rain fell on the city in 18 hours. The Illinois and Michigan Canal, which was supposed to carry sewage and surface water away from Lake Michigan, proved sorely inadequate for this kind of load–in spite of the costly “deep cut” that had enlarged it a few years earlier. A number of historical accounts, including a 1979 essay reprinted in 1998 by the Chicago Historical Society, reported that “not only did the sewers prove totally inadequate but the Des Plaines River overflowed into the canal, the canal overflowed into the Chicago River, and vast amounts of filth were carried into Lake Michigan and the city’s water supply….The subsequent outbreak of cholera, typhoid, and other waterborne diseases was estimated to have killed 12% of Chicago’s population–one person out of every eight!”
