All right we are gonna show you Wolf Point where the three branches of the
Chicago River come together. Here we are on a boat in the Chicago River.
This is captain Jessica, she's actually our producer but she's doing double duty
here driving the boat for us and here we are at Wolf Point this is where the
three branches of the Chicago River come together so let's get oriented look
around see if you can find the main branch of the Chicago River we'll mark
that for you when you found it that goes out to Lake Michigan from here and now
look around see if you can find the south branch of the Chicago River give
you a hint it's actually behind me if you can find me so the South Branch
flows all the way down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico and if you turn
around you can see the North branch of the Chicago River which flows from the
North Shore suburbs in Chicago Wolfe point where these three branches come
together was sort of the hub of the early frontier Chicago we're talking the
early 1800s there was a tavern on each bank of the river here look around and
see if you can find each of those taverns we'll mark them for you there
was actually a ferryboat so you could bar hop the most important of the three
taverns was over my right shoulder that was the Saganash Hotel it was run by a
an innkeeper named Mark Beaubien, who had 23 children by two wives. He used to
say, "I placed a fiddle like the devil and I keeps hotel like hell," and Beaubien
hosted the whole town of Chicago on various warm summer nights I love to
picture this maybe all 70 of those early Chicagoans would come down here to Wolf
Point and they'd crack open the casks of whiskey and Beaubien would jam on his
fiddle maybe with another frontier settler John Kinsey and the Native
Americans and French Canadians would dance the night away this confluence of
the river was so important here that actually it gave rise to Chicago's logo
if you're from Chicago you've probably seen it it's a circle with a Y in it
that Y represents the three brand the Chicago River a lot of Chicagoans
don't even know that and the other great thing about being right here where we
are right now is that since the river has always always been configured that
way or this way you can sort of see the archeological remains of the earlier
Chicago's that were here we already mentioned the frontiers Chicago that
disappeared in the early 1800s and was replaced by a 19th century industrial
boomtown look around and see if you can find out a big steel railroad bridge I'm
pointing to it right now it's it's it's always in the up position it's not used
anymore but it reminds us of the days when this was an industrial river there
were railroad lines here in fact Chicago's first railroad terminal was
here we'll mark that for you if you look around you can find it was the terminal
of the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad built by Chicago's first mayor William B Ogden
and actually didn't actually ever get as far as Galena but it sure dinh
the era of Chicago as the railroad capital of America there's an old cold
storage warehouse along the river that you can see if you look around for it
it's been rehabbed by Harry Wiese our katuk Terry weeson to condominiums the
river was lined with docks and wharves and jammed with schooners and canal
boats it was pretty filthy that was the I like to call it the second Chicago
after the frontier Chicago the industrial Chicago that burned to the
ground on October 8th 1871 and out of the ashes rose 20th century commercial
Chicago the world's first city of skyscrapers and we can see evidence of
that around here too there's the beautiful green glass
curving 333 West Wacker Drive by cohen petersen and fox a New York architecture
firm built in the 1980s it curves with the curve in the river and it's green to
reflect the greenish color of the river and a couple of newer buildings behind
me where I'm standing right now along the west bank of the river this one
right behind me is is called River Point and you'll notice that that the
buildings on the West Bank are actually built up up above
the level of the river there's a park at the base of the building but it's it's
one level above the river and that's because on the west bank of the river
are still active railroad lines so these buildings have to be built in some way
either above or between the railroad tracks a great example of that is is
this building at the mouth of the at the beginning of the South branch there that
is 150 North Riverside by Goetsch Partners completed in 2017 and look at
that it's like a pencil standing on its point and that's because there wasn't
much area at the base of the building because of the railroad tracks so they
have a narrow base of the building to get in between the tracks and then it
widens out as the building soars up towards the sky and the last thing I
want to show you is our new Riverwalk in Chicago um this is made possible because
these new passages have been built underneath the bridges so you can now
walk at river level under all the Chicago bridges all the way from here at
Wolf point all the way to the lakefront of Chicago so you think of our our
Prairie River and then our industrial River well now it's a 21st century River
lined with the restaurants and bars fishing piers a splash pad for the kids
places to dock your your pontoon boat or your kayak or our old river has been
liven up and brought to life for the 21st century
you