Chicago Beaches
The beaches in Chicago are an extensive network of waterfront recreational areas operated by the Chicago Park District. The Chicago Metropolitan waterfront includes parts of the Lake Michigan shores as well as parts of the banks of the Chicago, Des Plaines, Calumet, Fox, and DuPage Rivers and their tributaries. The waterfront also includes the Illinois and Michigan Canal and the Sanitary and Ship Canal. Historically, the waterfront has been used for commerce, industry, and leisure. Leisure, such as fishing, swimming, hunting, walking and boating, was much more prevalent throughout the river sections of the waterfront system early in the 19th century before industrial uses altered the landscape. By midcentury, much leisure shifted to Lake Michigan as a result of industrial influence. The first City of Chicago Public Beach opened in Lincoln Park in 1895. Today, the entire 28 miles (45 km) Chicago lakefront shoreline is man-made, and primarily used as parkland. There are thirty-three beaches in Chicago along the shores of freshwater Lake Michigan.
Typically, Chicago beaches take the name of the east-west street that runs perpendicular to the lake at each beach's location.
Read more about Chicago Beaches: History, Rogers Park Beaches, Berger Park, Lincoln Park Beaches, Humboldt Park Beach, Burnham Park Beaches, 63rd Street Beach, Calumet Park Beaches
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“They commonly celebrate those beaches only which have a hotel on them, not those which have a humane house alone. But I wished to see that seashore where man’s works are wrecks; to put up at the true Atlantic House, where the ocean is land-lord as well as sea-lord, and comes ashore without a wharf for the landing; where the crumbling land is the only invalid, or at best is but dry land, and that is all you can say of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)