January 14, 2025
Local News

Then & Now: Nettle and Aux Sable Creek Aqueducts – Grundy County

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A photograph of the Nettle Creek Aqueduct looking south. Local photographer George Bedford took this unique photograph of the Nettle Creek Aqueduct in Morris. This historic photograph, likely dating from the late 19th century, captures the nature of aqueduct’s early design, with a frame trunk carried by a Howe Truss between two stone abutments. (Photograph courtesy)

A bit of ingenious engineering is required to construct aqueducts to cross streams, creeks, and rivers along the Illinois and Michigan Canal route.

Along the 96-mile trek through the wilderness, the I&M Canal needed a series of 15 locks to navigate the 141-foot elevation change from Chicago to the Illinois River.

Aqueducts along the canal generally were composed of a trunk section, which carried the canal across an intersecting stream, supported by abutments at each end.

Canal engineers had to design and construct five aqueducts to carry the canal over other bodies of water, such as rivers and creeks. The five principal aqueducts, moving from east to west along the canal, built were over Aux Sable Creek, Nettle Creek, Fox River, Pecumsaugan Creek and Little Vermilion River.

A sixth aqueduct also was constructed across the Des Plaines River and served a feeder canal running between the Kankakee River and the main canal. Serving as a source of water for the canal, this is aqueduct is often referred to as the Kankakee Feeder.

In the early 19th century, both Aux Sable and Nettle Creeks were natural barriers to the construction of the I&M Canal. Because both bodies of water were a natural watershed, the canal engineers had to construct aqueducts over the creeks. The Aux Sable and Nettle Creek aqueducts are two of five aqueducts built along the canal as a solution to transporting canal boats over other bodies of water.

The Illinois and Michigan Canal aqueducts were essentially identical in terms of their basic construction components, such as abutments, piers, trunk, and a towpath bridge, but varied considerably in respect to length.

Constructed in 1847, the first aqueduct at Aux Sable Creek was built as part of the original I&M Canal construction project. This wooden aqueduct was replaced in 1927-28 by a steel structure. In 1948, the abutments and piers were strengthened, and in 1970, the towpath bridge was rebuilt.

The aqueduct spans 136 feet across Aux Sable Creek and is 18 feet wide. The steel aqueduct was again stabilized as part of infrastructure improvements done along the canal in the late 1990s.

Morris is one of several towns in Grundy Country that borders on the I&M Canal. In 1845, Col. William L. Perce arrived in Morris, opened a dry goods store in a room of the American House Hotel and took the contract to build the aqueduct across Nettle Creek on the west side of town.

The Nettle Creek Aqueduct is located along the part of the Illinois and Michigan Canal that was designated as “Section 126” during the construction phase of the canal.

Stone for constructing the aqueduct was quarried 7 miles west of Morris, near the river bank.

The original, red sandstone was inferior to other stone used along the canal and disintegrated over time.

In time this aqueduct was also rebuilt, and in 1910, the wooden aqueduct was removed and replaced with a steel structure.