Nature Bulletin No. 696   December 1, 1962
Forest Preserve District of Cook County
Seymour Simon, President
Roberts Mann, Conservation Editor

****:THE LAUGHTON FORD AND TRADING POST

In 1827, David and Bernardus (Barney) Laughton built a tavern in what 
is now Riverside. It was located north of the present bridge between 
that village and Lyons, on the Barry Point trail from Chicago. A short 
distance downstream is a limestone ledge and shallow ford where that 
trail, and two important Potawatomi trails, crossed the Des Plaines 
River.

The Laughtons were farsighted business men. They had been Indian 
traders at Hardscrabble, or Lee's Place, on the South Branch of the 
Chicago River near Damen Ave. That was the head of navigation on the 
river and the eastern end of the Chicago Portage route. Later it became 
the eastern terminus of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, and eventually 
the Sanitary and Ship Canal.

But the Potawatomi trade at Hardscrabble was dwindling; it would be 
better at Riverside. The fur trade was dwindling, The proposed canal 
from there to Ottawa would end the travel in canoes or boats by fur 
traders, explorers, missionaries, or anyone using the Chicago Portage 
route to the Illinois and Mississippi valleys. Further, with the growth of 
white settlements along the Illinois River and westward from Chicago, 
overland travel was increasing rapidly.

So the Laughtons moved to Riverside and, in 1830, purchased the 
quarter section upon which their tavern stood. Barry Point trail became 
part of the first country road built in Cook county and Laughton Tavern, 
in 1834, was a stop-over on the first stage coach line westward from 
Chicago.

Meanwhile they had established a trading post on another 
much-traveled overland route: the old Portage Trail which began at 
Hardscrabble and paralleled the water route through Mud Lake on high 
ground north of it. Laughton's trading post was just east of where that 
trail crossed the DesPlaines and then angled southwesterly to join what 
is now U. S. 66, an old Indian trail and overland route to Joliet, Ottawa, 
and the Illinois valley. The ford was about a half-mile north of where 
Portage Creek entered the river and a mile south of Riverside.

In those days the DesPlaines curved easterly until, near Harlem Ave., it 
made a hairpin turn and flowed southwest down the valley. There was 
also a cutoff channel through what is now Catherine Mitchell Lagoon, 
and a large island between it and the main channel. The Portage Trail or 
Laughton Ford was just north of that island. The old channel, the ford, 
and the island were obliterated when, in order to construct the Sanitary 
Canal, the river was straightened and a levee built to prevent it from 
overflowing eastward.

Mud Lake was a long swamp with two shallow channels emptying 
easterly into the South Branch and westerly, on the other side of a low 
continental divide, into the DesPlaines. Sometimes, when it became 
nearly dry, a portage of seven miles, from Hardscrabble to Portage 
Creek, was necessary. During long droughts the DesPlaines became so 
shallow between a succession of pools that portages of 25 miles to 
Cache Island at Romeo, or 50 to the mouth of the Kankakee, or almost 
100 miles to Starved Rock, had to be made. Consequently, the Portage 
Trail was intensively traveled but eventually after the I&M Canal was 
completed, Archer Ave. was built, and the Southwest Plank Road laid 
on Ogden Ave. t disappeared.

The locations of "Lawton's Trading House" and the ford were defined 
in an 1832 report by a U. S. engineer and shown on a later map. There 
we found a rectangular depression apparently an old cellar. It is in 
Ottawa Trail Woods, two blocks north of the 47th St. entrance and 400 
feet west of the drive through that forest preserve. At each corner there 
is a low masonry wall. In the center is a boulder commemorating that 
historic site.