The Day Chicago Flipped a River

The City That Flipped a River

In the late 1800s, Chicago had a big problem. And like all good problems, it started with poop.

The city’s sewage system was cutting edge. For 1850. Waste from over a million people got dumped straight into the Chicago River, which flowed directly into Lake Michigan. Also known as the city’s drinking water. So yeah, not ideal.

By 1885, the situation was so bad that a rainfall pushed human waste into the lake, leading to deadly typhoid and cholera outbreaks. Chicago realized it had two options.

1. Keep drinking its own filth and die slowly.

2. Flip the river and send the sewage to St. Louis.

Guess which one they picked?

That’s right. In 1900, the city straight up reversed the direction of the Chicago River. Like a Sims player with a grudge against Missouri.

The plan was bold and borderline unhinged. Engineers built a 28 mile long drainage canal, known as the Sanitary and Ship Canal, and dug it deep enough that gravity would force water to flow away from the lake instead of into it. It was essentially a giant plumbing project. Except the pipes were rivers and the stakes were thousands of lives.

How’d they pull it off? They didn’t just toss sandbags around and hope for the best. Crews used explosives, steam shovels, and sheer willpower to carve out the canal. They moved more earth than the Panama Canal project. The whole thing was so massive it became one of the largest civil engineering feats in American history.

Naturally, St. Louis was thrilled to receive Chicago’s floating presents.

Actually, no. They were furious. The state of Missouri sued Illinois, claiming Chicago was polluting the Mississippi River. The case made it all the way to the Supreme Court, which basically shrugged and said, “Eh, let it flow.”

And it did flow. Today, the river still runs backward from its natural direction, away from the lake and toward the Mississippi basin. It's one of the few rivers in the world that was manually reversed and still runs that way over a century later.

The wildest part? It worked. Cholera and typhoid rates plummeted. Chicago kept growing. The river’s reversal didn’t just solve a public health crisis. It also made the city a key transportation hub by linking the Great Lakes to the Mississippi. So not only did Chicago stop drinking its own toilet water, it also became a logistics powerhouse in the process.

Of course, there were tradeoffs. Ecosystems downstream took a hit. And shipping literal sewage across state lines? Not the friendliest move. But this is a city that dyes the river green for St. Patrick’s Day. They were never going for subtle.

So next time someone complains about infrastructure spending, remind them Chicago once moved a whole damn river just so they could stop drinking poop.

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