Illinois hotels collection

The Chicago River runs backwards. At the turn of the last century, a canal turned it towards the Mississippi to keep Lake Michigan, from which the city draws its water, untouched. Around it, the prairie has been ploughed almost in its entirety, and maize grows in black, stoneless soil. At Plano, Mies van der Rohe set a house of glass and steel on columns beside the Fox River, which sometimes rises to the steps and has already crossed the threshold. Near the Mississippi, at Cahokia, the clay platform of Monks Mound was raised on human backs, basket after basket.