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Mar 2010  |  By Geoffrey Baer  |  Comments

"I Didn't Know That"

How well do you know the North Shore?  There’s a lot of hidden history here that might surprise you even if you’re a lifelong North Shore dweller.

For example, did you know that the ice cream sundae was supposedly invented in Evanston?  Actually many towns claim to have invented this popular confection as a response to liquor laws. But you’ll like Evanston’s twist on the story. In other towns, we’re told that because drinking was banned on Sundays, a decadent ice cream concoction was served instead, and named for the day.

But in teetotaling Evanston, drinking was banned every day. So to make Sundays even drier, drink mixers like soda water were banned.  A local drug store got around the law by making an ice cream soda without the soda water to serve on Sundays. Then it was the name of the confection that proved offensive, which is where the creative spelling “sundae” comes from.

Each month we offer a quiz question to test your North Shore knowledge.  Try your hand at this one:

Where on the North Shore does the Chicago River originate?

A. The Skokie Lagoons–Nice try, but The Skokie Lagoons were built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s and 40s. They were carved out of marshland along the east fork of the Chicago River’s North Branch. But the river’s source is farther north.

B. Wilmette Harbor–Try again. Wilmette Harbor is the source of the North Shore Channel, a manmade ditch that flows south from a flood gate behind the Baha’i House of Worship through Wilmette and Evanston.  It joins up with the North Branch of the Chicago River on the city’s Northwest Side near Foster and Kedzie.  The channel was opened in 1909 to help keep the Chicago River flowing backwards by feeding Lake Michigan water downstream.  The Chicago River was reversed in 1900 to divert the city’s sewage away from Lake Michigan and send it down the Mississippi instead.

C. A sewer pipe west of Waukegan–You got it! The Chicago River’s North Branch consists of three forks that have their origins in wetlands a little north and west of the North Shore. According to river historian David Solzman, the source of the east fork in Park City west of Waukegan is actually a sewer pipe. That’s because most of the original wetlands there have been paved over and are now drained by storm sewers. The three forks meander south through communities like Lake Bluff, Lake Forest, Highland Park, Deerfield, Northbrook, Glenview and others.  The east and middle forks join up at Wilmette Golf Club. The west fork joins that combined flow a little farther south at Chick Evans Golf Course in Morton Grove.