(upbeat music)
- [Geoffrey Baer] Chicago was built on the backs
of hardworking people.
And much of their work was on the waterfront.
In the 19th Century, Chicago was the busiest port
in the nation.
Originally along the Chicago River,
the maritime industry moved here to the Calumet River
on the south side in the early 1900's.
The industry isn't what it used to be
but enormous Great Lakes ships still dock here.
And barges ply the rivers and canals
that form the Chicago Area Waterways System.
There's so much traffic
that moveable bridges along this river
operate 24-hours a day unlike those on the Chicago River.
Land along the riverbanks in South Deering
in east side now used for shipping and storage once teamed
with factories that made steel and soap,
paint and chemicals, even General Mills breakfast cereal.
During the industrial heyday, smokestacks were proud symbols
of progress and prosperity.
Today's captains of industry compete
to show who's the greenest.
Exelon claims this is nation's largest urban solar plant.
It's built on a remediated brownfield site in West Pullman.
The nine-megawatt plant produces a tiny fraction
of the energy that fossil fuel and nuclear plants pump out
but it's enough to power 1,500 homes per year.
In greenhouse gas savings, that's the equivalent
of taking 2,500 cars off the road according to Exelon.
Some factories are still going strong here.
This is Ford's Chicago Assembly Plant in Hegewisch.
It's the company's oldest continuously operating plant,
it opened in 1924 to produce Model-Ts.
Today the nearly three million-square-foot facility
cranks out Ford Explorers and Lincoln Aviators
after a $1 billion retrofit in 2019.
Lake Calumet is sort of the poster child for the rise
and decline of industry here.
It was once known for its natural beauty
and abundant wildlife.
George Pullman used Lake Calumet as the idyllic setting
for the company town he built
for his famous rail car factory.
With the anticipated opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway
in 1958, the lake was deepened and long peninsulas
were added to serve as slips
for the ocean-going foreign freighters
that were expected to arrive in large numbers but didn't.
Along the eastern shore of Lake Calumet
where steel mills once dumped waste material called slag,
daredevil stunt bike riders now have a place to play.
This is part of a massive repurposing of old industrial land
in this region for recreation and nature.
Now don't get the wrong idea.
Waterborne shipping has declined in Chicago
but our region still handles a quarter of all the freight
in North America and rivals Los Angeles
as the largest container hub in the Western Hemisphere
according to the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning.