Montrose Harbor
The most northerly of Chicago’s harbors Montrose Harbor has 711 slips, mooring cans and star docks that can accommodate boats from 25 feet to 50 feet in length in length.
Chicago Corinthian Yacht Club
The Chicago Corinthian Yacht Club was founded in 1934 and has over 400 members. It is one of the oldest yacht clubs on the Great Lakes and hosts national regattas and weekend club racing. The harbor is well protected from weather and has an average depth of 18 feet.
Montrose Peninsula, Chicago, Illinois
The Montrose Peninsula itself was engineered by the city of Chicago in 1872 to provide more recreational space and a harbor for boats. A system of cribs or revetments was constructed out into the lake, and the area behind them was then filled. These original structures were built using wood pilings and rock-fill and covered with capstones.
Much of the land used in
creating these land filled parks along the lakefront comes from the lake
itself. Engineers in the 1800’s could
see that the long-shore currents carried the sand and other sediment to the
south. The majority of the sand is
deposited at the south end of Lake Michigan in and immense sandbar called the
Indiana Shoals. Specially designed ships dredged the Indiana Shoals in the late
1800’s to supply the sand needed for the proposed landfill shoreline.
This expansion and improvement of Chicago’s parks began with the 1930s projects
of the New Deal. The area along Lake Shore Drive in Chicago from Jackson Park
to Montrose Harbor is actually a 15-mile chain of land entirely created by
dredging, landfill and plantings which was accomplished with the labor of
hundreds funded by the Works Progress Administration (WPA).
