continue
tour:
LaSalle/Peru
| Marseilles
The tiny wood frame building on Columbus Street in Ottawa is the last remaining I&M Canal Tollhouse. It was part of a complex that once included a “turning bridge” over the canal, a maintenance shed, privy and well.
Albert Dow became Ottawa’s toll collector in 1849, serving until 1872 when he moved to Chicago to become the I&M
Canal
toll collector in Bridgeport. Dow or his clerk may have doubled as the tender
of the turning bridge located near the tollhouse. Someone had to be on duty
24 hours a day because boats could not pass until the bridge tender used
a crank to pivot the bridge on its center pier. Waiting for the bridge to
turn afforded plenty of time to pay the toll. By 1871, boat captains had paid enough tolls here and at similar collection stations in Chicago, Joliet and LaSalle to retire the debt that the state incurred in building the canal.
