Lockport, IL is a cool little town founded in 1830. It is one of those key cogs in the rise of commerce that is easy to forget.
I spent a couple hours in Lockport in September 2003 before an appointment. Here are some pics.
Here’s some text from their city website:
Lockport’s rich canal heritage of the 1800’s can be re-discovered with a stroll amidst the native stone warehouses along the canal, in the first lock built on this important waterway (left), and in shadows cast by a setting sun on Lockport’s unique architecture.
If you seek the allure and the peace and quiet of earlier times, you are invited to discover Lockport’s history–and the canal that made possible the growth of Chicago. Settlers, and trade to the Midwest, came by way of the Erie Canal, Great Lakes, and the I&M Canal–the first navigable link to the Mississippi River. The City of Lockport is one of the best preserved canal sites in existence today.