The Riverside Historical Museum will sponsor a free weekly series of live presentations and films on Thursday evenings beginning on Thursday, September 18th and continuing until December 18th. The programs will begin at 7:00pm in the Riverside Public Library. Live presentations will be about an hour long with a question and answer period. The length of film presentations will vary by film.
This first “Historic Storytelling” series of presentations will focus on the early history of Chicago and the Riverside area from the end of the last Ice Age to the opening of the I&M Canal. Locally produced films and accomplished local storytellers will weave the spellbinding tales of Riverside’s past.
Presenters:
Gary Mechanic
Gary is the Director of the Riverside Historical Museum. He has been learning and telling the “birth story” of Chicago at the Chicago Portage National Historic Site in Portage Woods Forest Preserve for the last nine years. Gary is the producer and host of the Historic Storytelling Series.
Jack MacRae
Jack was born at an early age in the small Northeastern Illinois mining community of Barrington. He has been interpreting the cultural and natural history of the Chicago Region for 29 years and homebrewing beer longer. Jack currently works as a Naturalist with the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County.
Jeff Carter
Jeff Carter, President of Friends of the Chicago Portage, is an experienced Chicago tour guide and an accomplished storyteller. Jeff will bring to life the fascinating stories of the explorer La Salle, life in early Chicago and the creation of the I&M Canal.
John Elliott
John Elliott is the Director of Education of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County, an avid naturalist and an experienced interpreter. John will present a fascinating slide show of the life and history of the the river in Riverside.
Series Schedule:
All programs begin at 7pm at the Riverside Public Library located at 1 Burling Road in Riverside, Illinois.
September 18,
“Connecting Worlds, The Story of the Chicago Portage”
produced by “Friends of the Chicago Portage” c2007, 30 minutes
This locally produced documentary film is the introduction to the early history and discovery of Chicago. The 30 minute film explores the reasons why a metropolis of nine million people grew out of a ancient canoe portage a through a prairie marsh.
Connecting Worlds traces the geological creation of the Portage with fascinating animations of the retreat of the glaciers and the formation of the landscape we inhabit.
Connecting Worlds presents interviews with local historians, interpreters, teachers and authors who explain how the Chicago Portage created Chicago and how the Chicago Portage is still in operation today.
A brief question and answer period will follow the film.
September 25,
The Journey of Joliet & Marquette; The Bravest Men in the World
Presented by Gary Mechanic
A young mapmaker and a Jesuit priest mapped the master stream of North America more than a hundred years before the Revolutionary War. Follow their five month long, 3,000 mile journey of discovery through the heart of North America as veteran storyteller Gary Mechanic details the dangers they faced and the discoveries made by the “Bravest Men in the World”.
October 2,
Mammoths and Mastodons of Riverside
Presented by Jack MacRae
Two species of early Illinois elephants - mammoths and mastodons - lived in the Riverside region during the last Ice Age. Jack MacRae describes the natural history of these prehistoric creatures and provides fascinating details on some local discoveries.
October 9,
The Life of LaSalle
Presented by Jeff Carter
Rene-Robert Cavalier Sieur de La Salle may have been the unluckiest explorer ever. He was the first to build and sail a ship on the great lakes only to lose it with a full cargo on its first voyage. He founded forts and failed colonies. Jeff Carter describes LaSalle’s long career of vision, exploration, discovery, triumph, loss, bad luck and finally, assassination at the hands of his own men while lost in the wilds of Texas.
October 16,
The Story of Swiftwalker: Gurdon Hubbard
Presented by Gary Mechanic
Gurdon Hubbard played critical but largely unknown roles in the creation of Chicago. Gary Mechanic reveals the life of this pioneering trader and builder of the I&M Canal who, during his lifetime, saw Chicago grow from a muddy village of a hundred souls to a great city of nearly a million.
October 23,
Earliest Chicago
Presented by Jeff Carter
Chicago began as sleepy trading post on the edge of civilization. Jeff Carter details life by the “Garlic River” from The Forks to The Fort during the time of DuSable, Kinzie and the American fur trade.
October 30,
“City of the Century, Part 1 – Mudhole to Metropolis”
Part One of the award winning film “City of the Century” chronicles Chicago’s dramatic transformation from a swampy frontier town of fur traders and Native Americans to a massive metropolis that was the quintessential American city of the nineteenth century.
City of the Century tells how in just 60 years Chicago grew from a remote, swampy frontier town into one of the most explosively alive cities in the world. It’s the story of the wealthy and the indigent, the heralded and the forgotten, the shop assistants and the millionaire retail barons who together created Chicago.
November 6,
The Natural History of the Des Plaines River
Presented by John Elliott
From its beginning as a glacial meltwater stream that flowed into Lake Michigan, to its life after humans arrived and began to alter it, the Des Plaines River has had an amazing history of changes. John Elliott will describe the variety of creatures that depend on the river for their lives and present a stunning slide show of rare historical photographs of life along the river from the archives of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County.
November 13,
Prairie Tides
Produced by Prairie Tides Productions, c2002
Waves of settlers bound by determination and destiny poured across the tall grass prairie in tides of immigration to dig the Illinois & Michigan Canal. This locally produced film brings to life the hardships and happier times of the workers who dug the ditch that made Chicago.
November 20,
The First Indians of Riverside
Presented by Jack MacRae
Over 10,000 years ago, the first people to pass through the Riverside region were hunting big game animals and collecting food for survival. Jack MacRae provides a surprising glimpse of the lives of the first people to drink from Bourbon Springs.
November 27,
THANKSGIVING - NO PROGRAM
December 4,
The Last Indians of Riverside
Presented by Jack MacRae
The Potawatomi were among the last group of Native Americans to live in the Riverside region. By the time work on the I&M Canal was begun, the last local Indian villages were gone forever. Jack MacRae looks at the extraordinary influence these people had on the development of Chicago and the Midwest.
December 11,
The I&M Canal
Presented by Jeff Carter
The opening of the I&M Canal in 1848 is the watershed moment that marks the beginning of Chicago’s amazingly rapid growth from a small town to a metropolis. Jeff Carter explores the reasons for building the canal, the difficulties encountered during its construction, how it changed Chicago and its life today.
December 18,
“The Christmas Tree Ship”
The Christmas Tree Ship is a great lakes legend that is a part of the holiday tradition of thousands of local families. This one hour film documents the story of the most famous of the Christmas Tree ships; the Rouse Simmons, a 205-ton, three-masted schooner that disappeared beneath the waves in a winter gale in November 1912 while bound for Chicago with its famous annual cargo of evergreens.