Download or read book History of the Illinois River Valley, Vol. 1 (Classic Reprint) written by John Leonard Conger and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2017-12-11 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from History of the Illinois River Valley, Vol. 1 Few regions of like size in our country exhibit more unique features than does the Valley of the Illinois. In glacial times it was the outlet to the Gulf of Mexico for the run-off from the great ice sheets covering Canada, the Great Lakes, and north central states. In this era it received many of its present day physical features. Before Lake Erie found its egress to Lake Ontario over the Niagara Falls, the waters of the Great Lakes ran down through the Illinois Valley to the Gulf. Moreover, in that far off glacial period, the upper Mississippi and Rock rivers joined near the site of the city of Dixon and thence flowed southward to meet the Illinois near the present location of Hennepin. These forces have given the valley rather the character of a sluggish lake than a typical river bed, of normal fall. From Peru to the Mississippi, the Illinois shows only one and one-half inch of fall per mile. Before the white man came, the valley's luxurious prairies abounded in all kinds of game and were a region much sought after by the Indian tribes. Here were fought some of the most momentous Indian wars. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.