In a McDonald's somewhere near Joliet, Lee Hanson is explaining that he hopes to organize a tourism program for the dozens of museums, parks and historic sites along the historic 96.4-mile Illinois and Michigan Canal corridor. He wants to rehabilitate the area for visitors and history buffs, and he wants the effort to create jobs.

"I think the important thing about the I&M Canal, nationally and locally, is that it helped open up the West," says Hanson, executive director of the Illinois and Michigan Canal National Heritage Corridor Commission. "It made Chicago the port it is today. The agricultural development of this area was contingent upon having easy transportation facilities, which the canal provided. It allowed manufacturing goods of all kinds to travel west."

Today the canal that state Rep. Abraham Lincoln fought to build is said to be a toxic waste dump in areas, particularly near Rockdale. The canal is dilapidated and silt-filled in several places, replaced by highway in others. Only one of the 14 canal locks, Lock No. 14 in La Salle, is even close to usable for demonstrations. No area is suitable for a large tourist boat because there's no place to turn the vessel around. No site has been developed to explain the history of the canal, which linked Lake Michigan to the Gulf of Mexico via the Illinois and Mississippi rivers. Historic sites aren't marked. Area museums have no theme and many are like "grandma's attic," says Hanson.

The Illinois & Michigan Canal bypassing the Aux Sable locks east of Morris. Photo by Fred Walker

Hanson, his two-person staff and a 19-member commission will try to change that, using a yearly budget of $250,000. Under a federal law that dissolves the commission by 1994 — 1999 if its work is not finished — they are working to rehabilitate the area, which winds southwest from Chicago to La Salle. The commission is to provide direction and oversight for corridor planning and operations.

"The biggest problem we've got right now is Rockdale [where] what I'll call toxic waste — for lack of a better term — is being dumped into the canal," he says. "The area smells pretty bad. I don't think we'll be able to walk people across there until we get it cleaned up. I don't know [if] there's any way to remove the toxic waste."

The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) "has been aware of this approximately forever," says Ted Denning, manager of the Chicago area field office's division of water pollution control. "Rockdale had operated a small sewage treatment plant that was not adequate to treat the strength of the industrial waste they were getting in there. Pigments, paints, cyanide were going through with little or no obvious effect and turned portions of the canal bright colors for awhile. When it worked its way downstream, the canal became gray or black."

The discharge stopped last December when the village was hooked up to Joliet's sewage treatment plant, but the IEPA has asked the Attorney General's Office to make Rockdale pay for the cleanup. Rockdale Mayor Don Gould acknowledges that the community is partially responsible for the mess; he also blames industries and other communities, but says the 2,000-person village can't afford to clean up the canal.

"I can see that we're going to have to do something, a portion of it, but we're going to need some federal and some state assistance," he says. "They're looking for an agreement from the village of Rockdale and [it] is in no position to commit an unknown sum to clean up the canal."

The commission, created by Congress, is affiliated with the National Park Service. It has no direct connection with the state, although it gets some funds from the Illinois Department of Commerce and Community Affairs and works with the Illinois Department of Conservation and the Illinois Department of Transportation, which controls parks and roads in the corridor.

If everything goes according to the corridor commission's plan, by the time the commission is dissolved the canal will be refurbished — and filled with water in areas where the canal walls and aqueducts are solid. A 90-mile walking and bicycling track will run along the waterway from Harlem Avenue in Chicago to La Salle, where the Little Vermilion River joins the Illinois River, and a visitor should be able to spend two or three days exploring attractions that tell the area's story. In 1984, Congress agreed to rehabilitate the canal area, naming it the first national heritage corridor and creating a commission. Commission members were appointed in 1985. Five members are from industry, five from the counties through which the canal runs — Cook, Will, Grundy, La Salle and Bureau. One is a National Park Service appointee; the remainder represent state government, preservation, architecture, history and conservation interests.

Their work began in 1986, slowly. Hanson was hired in June of that year, coming from a National Park Service job in New York. Bob Holmes, a National Park Service employee, came on board in September to serve as chief of interpretation, and a secretary was hired in November. Since the establishment of the Commission:

• The commission and state Conservation Department rehabilitated the walls at Lock No. 1 in Lockport, where the stone had collapsed. This cost the commission $104,500. The state's share was $166,000.

• Gov. James R. Thompson designated the region a "Corridor of Opportunity," under his 1986 program to develop regions of the state that have common characteristics.

This made it eligible for state Department of Commerce and Community Affairs funds. The state grant was $85,770, according to the Corridors of Opportunity's annual report.

• A survey found that 4.1 million people visited the corridor's major museums, forest preserves and other sites. The five Effigy Tumuli earth sculptures in Buffalo Rock State Park, a pioneer settlement at Lockport, and Starved Rock State Park are among the existing attractions. An Illinois Bell study found that increasing the number of tourists by 25 percent would create 600 jobs.

• The state Department of Commerce and Community Affairs gave the Joliet-based Heritage Corridor Convention and Visitors Bureau about $180,000 to promote the canal region. The bureau's interim executive director, Gene Bogdan, said the money was used to promote and operate the ornate Rialto Square Theater in Joliet, the Lockport area and Starved Rock State Park.

This year the commission established a logo for signs that the state Transportation Department is constructing. They will be placed along the interstates and secondary roads to lead tourists to seven visitor centers. From east to west, the centers will be at the Isle a la Cache Museum in Romeoville, the Conservation Department visitors' center at the Gaylord Building in Lockport, Will County Historical Society in Lockport, Bicentennial Park in Joliet, Channahon State Park in Channahon, Gebhard Woods in Morris, and the Army Corps of Engineers' Waterway Museum at Starved Rock in Utica. When visitors get to the centers, they will be told about sites in the immediate area.

"The reason for picking these seven areas to go to initially is that if we tried to put up signs for every historical museum and site in the corridor and natural area, we'd have so many signs at every crossroad that the visitor would be totally confused," Hanson says.

The focal point is the canal, which has a rich history. But the story is largely untold.

In 1822, Congress authorized the state to "survey and mark, through the public lands of the United States, the route of the canal connecting the Illinois River with the southern bend of Lake Michigan," state archivist Wayne Temple wrote in his book, Lincoln's Connection With the Illinois and Michigan Canal, which gives the following account. Within a year, the state appropriated $6,000 and appointed a five-member board of commissioners to plan a canal that would accommodate boats at least 75-feet long and 13 1/2-feet wide. The canal was to be at least 40-feet wide at the summit and 28-feet wide at the bottom.

The commission became a private corporation, but it couldn't find investors and dissolved on January 20, 1826. Congress voted to give the state land for the canal; President John Quincy Adams signed the measure on March 2, 1827. The General Assembly agreed, and construction was approved on January 1829.

In 1834, the project languished as Abraham Lincoln took his seat in the Illinois legislature and began fighting to begin construction. By January 9, 1836, Gov. Joseph Duncan signed into law a Lincoln-backed bill permitting him to issue stock for a loan of $500,000 at 6 percent interest. The bill also called for three canal commissioners, a provision Lincoln pushed for.

The board finally took office in April 1836 and hired an engineer for $2,160. Twelve years later, on April 23, 1848, the canal opened after weathering a depression, near bankruptcy of the state and criticism from a Lincoln opponent. Wickliffe Kitchell of Montgomery County viewed the canal as too costly and said that the representative from Sangamon County was spending money like a drunk.

Much more can be learned from Temple's book and other literature, but nowhere along the canal is the information available. For example, Congressman Abraham Lincoln traveled the canal several times, preferring the water route to a stage coach. The 22-hour boat trip cost $4 per person. On May 11, Lincoln spoke to Congress and urged granting land to states to construct roads and other transportation routes. He used the Illinois and Michigan waterway to help make the point.

"That canal was first opened for business last April," he said, as quoted by Temple. "In a very few days we were all gratified to learn, among other things, that sugar had been carried from New Orleans through this canal to Buffalo in New York. This sugar took this route doubtless because it was cheaper than the old route. Supposing the benefit of the reduction in the cost of carriage to be shared between seller and buyer, the result is that the New Orleans merchant sold his sugar a little dearer, and the people of Buffalo sweetened their coffee a little cheaper than before — a benefit resulting from the canal. Not to Illinois where the canal is, but to Louisiana and New York where it is not." But by 1933 the canal was replaced by the new, larger Illinois Waterway — which paralleled the I&M Canal and could accommodate larger boats — and the cheaper, quicker, more efficient railroads.

A drive through the canal corridor today reveals the beauty of the area, as well as the need for repairs. At Lock 14 in La Salle, visitors can see fairly complete remains of the wooden locks that controlled the water flow. But at other locations, the wood is rotting and falling into the canal. Then there's the Civilian Conservation Corps picnic area at McKinley Woods near Channahon where the canal and Illinois River run side by side. The site would be charming, but the surrounding stone wall is falling into the river.

The corridor commission hopes to reverse the deterioration. It also is developing an "interpretive plan" to give area museum curators and site owners "some future direction as to how their particular area or museum might fit into an overall interpretive scheme for the entire corridor," Hanson says. "Then, if for some reason the commission should happen to go out of business, this plan would act as the key that would hold everything together.

"There are a lot of sites in the area that need fixing up. We're hoping that when this interpretive plan is done it will tell us what needs to be done at these sites and then we can put some money into these sites."

Radio transmitters will be erected on Interstates 80 and 55 in the next year. Drivers will be able to tune in on their radios and hear messages promoting special events in the area. A general brochure — complete with maps for tourists interested in self-guided tours — is being printed to identify area attractions, and another is in the works for those interested in studying the region's geology.

Workshops also are being held "to assist museums in assessing their collections and to see if there aren't ways they can make them work better." Hanson says. He says the Illinois and Michigan Canal corridor ultimately should become an area a tourist can visit to enjoy history and nature.

"Right now, I'm more concerned about the quality than I am about the quantity of visitors, the quality of service that we give to the visitors as opposed to the quantity. I figure if we give a quality service, the numbers are going to grow by themselves. We don't want to attract too many people, for two reasons. One, because we can't handle them, and two, because if too many people overrun a site, they're going to have a bad experience and they're going to go away saying, 'Don't go down there. It's just like being in downtown Chicago.' "