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Lockport, Illinois

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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Lockport, New York

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A city of Will county, Illinois, U.S.A., on the Des Plaines river and the Illinois & Michigan Canal, and the terminus of the Chicago Sanitary District Drainage Canal, about 33 m. S.E. of Chicago and 4 m. N.N.W. of Joliet. Pop. (1900) 2659, of whom 552 were foreign-born and 130 were negroes. Lockport is served by the Chicago & Alton, and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railways, and by the Chicago & Joliet Electric railway. It is in a picturesque farming country, and there are good limestone quarries in the valley of the Des Plaines river. It has manufactures and a considerable trade, especially in grain. A settlement was made here about 1827; in 1837 the site was chosen as headquarters for the Illinois & Michigan Canal and a village was laid out; it was incorporated in 1853, and was chartered as a city in 1904. In 1892 work was begun on the Chicago Drainage Canal, whose controlling works are here and whose plant, developing 40,000 h.p. from the 40 ft. fall between Joliet and Lockport, supplies Lockport with cheap power and has made it a manufacturing rather than a commercial city.