The on-going drought conditions wreaking havoc across large belt of the country have driven the water in Lake Michigan an in below its previousrecord low gear , and are n’t halt . Last month , the U.S. Army Corps of Engineersannouncedthat , if this proceed and the lake water drop below the level of the Chicago River , the river could reverse of course and set out flowing back towards its beginning . ( gratefully , there ’s a series oflocksseparating the two , which will help prevent the less - than - clean river from flowing into the lake and the city ’s source of drunkenness water . ) Has an American river ever done an about - face like this before ?
Right Back Where it Started From
Oh yeah . In fact , the Chicago has done it before . If the river does reverse path , it wo n’t be running backward so much as running forwards again .
When Europeans first decide in the Chicago area , the river drained into Lake Michigan , which was all right — except that settler used the river to dump wastefulness , and used the lake for drink water . As the urban center grow , there were numerous eruption of typhoid fever and cholera because of polluted drinking water , and something had to be done .
In the late 1800s , the metropolis decided to solve their problem with an ambitious technology feat : They would reverse the menses of the river and send it away from the lake and towards the Mississippi River . The so - called “ Chicago Diversion ” worked : It not only divert contaminated water away from the city ’s imbibing water , but also link the Great Lakes and Mississippi River water systems and opened up the possibility of commercial-grade travel and trade between them .
It has n’t been just barges and haulers that could cross from one arrangement to the other , though . Invasive Asian carp , introduced decade ago to southern fish farm as pool cleaners , have gradually made their way north , threatening aboriginal species and altering food webs as they go . With the fish approach the Great Lakes , theideaof un - change by reversal ( re - rescind ? ) the Chicago River has been quetch around , but now it looks like the river could take forethought of the problem itself .
All Shook Up
The most famous of American Rivers , the mighty Mississippi , also might have gone backwards more than once . In 1811 and 1812 , three quake — themost powerfulto ever hit the eastern U.S.—struck what was then a sparsely populated area of the Louisiana Territory .
Eyewitness accounts from the quake read like Michael Bay script : The soil rippled and quivered ; chasms opened up and eat up stock and police van ; Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin and dirt exploded from the dry land like volcanic eruptions and blotted out the sun ; the Mississippi shook with such violence that the urine ran backwards and boat were tangle upstream .
One boater , desire to get away from the Tree falling over on the river coin bank , put his boat out into the middle of the river and soonfound , he claimed , that “ the current vary , and the gravy boat look sharp up , for about the space of a bit , with the speed of the swiftest horse cavalry , ” fast enough that he had to hold on to his lid to keep it on his pass .
step by step , the man say , the river repay to its normal course . Exactly how long that took is unreadable , and various firsthand accounts have the river going backwards for anywhere from a few hr to a few days . Whether the river even rescind itself at all is confutable , and the United States Geological Survey says that basis uplifts and waves displace upriver may have just make theillusionthat the water was make a motion backwards .
What ’s more sure is that the Mississippi reversed course for about 24 hours whenHurricane Isaacstruck last year , and when Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005 .
