The world's busiest port began as a muddy path around a marsh.

When French Canadian explorer Louis Joliet (1645-1700) led an expedition to explore the Mississippi River System, he and his crew of Voyageurs, accompanied by Jesuit Missionary Pere Marquette, came down through Lake Michigan to Green Bay, ascended the Fox River, traversed over a short portage and entered the Wisconsin River which flowed into the Mississippi.

The Illini Native Americans living along the Mississippi in Illinois recommended that Joliet return by a safer and easier route back to the Great Lakes. This entailed ascending the Illinois River and its tributary the Des Planes and to a portage around Mud Lake in an area known as Checagou which led to a very short river, which emptied, into Lake Michigan.

In 1673 Joliet became the first person to document "The Chicago Portage". He even suggested a canal to connect the waterways. 175 years later the Illinois and Michigan Canal would be built, and within 200 years of Joliet's arrival Chicago became the busiest port on earth.

How this muddy portage became home to an industrial and commercial giant is the story of Chicago. It is the story of voyageurs in birch-bark canoes, canal diggers, captains and crews fighting gales in their wooden schooners and later in great steel ore freighters, ship builders for war as well as peacetime trade, commercial fishermen and recreational boaters.

The Chicago Maritime Museum celebrates the men and women who built, crewed, loaded and unloaded the ships and later on used Chicago's waterways for enjoyment and recreation. They built Chicago into the world-class port city that it is today.