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Western Great Lakes: Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin

ern and southern limits. The Mississippi runs the entire length of Illinois on the west. Major rivers that flow inside the state include the Kaskaskia, Little Wabash, and Illinois. The Illinois River forms the longest section of the 336-mile (541-km) Illinois Waterway. The waterway con- nects Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River. Completed in 1933, it also makes use of the Des Plaines, Chicago, and Calumet rivers as well as artificial canals and lakes. A system of dams and locks enables vessels to be raised or lowered (depending on the direction they’re traveling). This is necessary because of the 163-foot (50 m) difference in elevation between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River at the mouth of the Illinois.

A wide range of goods, from coal and petroleum to manufactured prod- ucts and grain, are transported along the Illinois Waterway on barges. Goods moved to the northern end of the waterway—Lake Michigan at Chicago—can be offloaded onto larger ships for transport across the Great Lakes and, via the St. Lawrence Flowering redbud trees are reflected in the calm surface of Lake Marmo on a warm spring afternoon at the Morton Arboretum in Lisle. This 1,700-acre (688 ha) botanic garden includes more than 4,100 different species of trees and over 180,000 cata- logued plants.

Prairie grasses grow in north-central Illinois, near Franklin Grove.