Lyons, Illinois

The village of Lyons sits on ground that shaped the entire interior of North America. In sixteen seventy-three, French explorer Louis Joliet and missionary Father Jacques Marquette were paddling north after mapping the upper Mississippi River when their Kaskaskia guides showed them a low portage connecting the Des Plaines River to the Chicago River. That short overland carry linked the Great Lakes basin to the Mississippi watershed and became, quite literally, the birthplace of Chicago.

Native peoples had used this route for generations. Today the Chicago Portage National Historic Site here in Lyons marks the spot, designated by the National Park Service in nineteen fifty-two and run by the Forest Preserves of Cook County. Without this muddy shortcut, the city behind you might never have been built.