Cicero Avenue Field Trip

I was fixing some nits in a posting I have spent hours writing about a Sunday field trip up Cicero Avenue researching the Belt Line Co. of Chicago RR. The posting probably had close to 100 pictures, most of them small and medium sized. And then when I did a Undo command, the whole thing disappeared! And the autosave made it permanent before I could close the edit window. I'm not going to spend more hours on it. But one picture is worth uploading again. I stopped in the shopping center that was developed on the land of the old Western Electric's Hawthorn Works. I had remembered that they had torn down all of the old factory buildings except the tower. I think it is neat how the new shopping center building pays homage to the tower. (Too bad I got a light pole in front of the tower.)

And there is an I&M Canal visitor center on 65th Street just after you turn East from Archer Avenue. I was not able to find anything on this center on the web. They mentioned that there server was down. They had more info on the portage and the Santa Fe Prairie than the I&M Canal. When I approached a bridge on Il 171, the sign said I&M Canal. But when I looked over the edge, there were double railroad tracks. So that would have been the GM&O right-of-way. Just a little north, I-55  goes northeast and crosses the new canal and then uses the old I&M Canal right-of-way the rest of the way to town.