Jakarta Dredge

A NYT story today on the first dredging effort by Jakarta since the 1970s. I wonder what Bubbly creek would turn up....?

Effigy Tumuli

 From the CLUI website:

The Effigy Tumuli earthwork consists of five geometrically abstracted animal forms, created on old mining land along the Illinois River. Now a state park, the sculpture is in flux, parts eroding, parts overgrown, others nearly bare. It is one of the largest artworks in the country, and the shapes are so large that they can only be discerned from the air. On the ground, one experiences mounded earth, paths, interpretive signs, drainage control gullies, and patches of grass, shrubbery and exposed earth. Michael Heizer was commissioned to make the sculpture in 1983, by the president of the Ottawa Silica Company, who had an interest in art and whose company owned the site. The property had been strip-mined for coal, and was a polluted and eroded barren landscape, with highly acidic soil. For this "reclamation art" project, instead of drawing on his vocabulary of abstract forms, Heizer used figurative forms, creating mounds shaped like animals native to the region. There is a snake, catfish, turtle, frog, and a water strider (the legs of which can be seen in the photograph above). He considered these figures to be evocative of the Indian mounds that can be found throughout the Midwest, and intended his sculpture to be a statement for the Native Americans. A trail wanders through the 1.5 mile long site, with remnants of interpretive signs that once depicted maps of the site to help to give visitors a sense of what they might be looking at, but are now mostly blank. Heizer seemed pleased that the forms were imperceptible from the ground, saying the piece "requires a chronological development of perception."

Historical Topographic Maps

For more general topographic information, settlement history, and cultural landscape transformations, look to the USGS 7.5 minute (quad) series. Historical quad maps are available here.

Historical Township Plats

One of the key sources for early land-cover and use, across the entire US, are the General Land Office township maps. For Illinois, these historical maps are scanned and available here.

Pre-Settlement Vegetation Maps

This coming week we will be discussing a range of sources by which we might begin to understand historical vegetation and landscape qualities. From the General Land Office township plats and field notes to early settler accounts, we will look to measure our present attitudes around restoration in a way that incorporates historic research into pre-settlement landscapes.

Great Rivers Chicago

Just this week, the Friends of the Chicago River published their comprehensive planning documents: Great Rivers Chicago. We will refer to this document--its goals and aspirations, as well as its gaps and lacunae--throughout the term.

Riverfronts, Deep Tunnels, and Excrement

Below are a great series of articles from Chicago Magazine that relate to a range of water/river/urban/history/ecological/infrastructural issues we will be addressing in the first weeks of the semester (thanks to Andres Hernandez for the tips!)

Marina City
Deep Tunnel
Reversal