Chicago Beaches

The beaches Chicago extensive network waterfront recreational areas Chicago Park District. The Chicago Metropolitan waterfront includes parts Lake Michigan shores parts banks Chicago, Des Plaines, Calumet, Fox, and DuPage Rivers their tributaries. The waterfront includes Illinois Michigan Canal Sanitary Ship Canal. Historically, waterfront commerce, industry, leisure. Leisure, fishing, swimming, hunting, walking boating, prevalent throughout river sections waterfront system early nineteenth century before industrial altered landscape. By midcentury, leisure shifted Lake Michigan result industrial influence. The first City Chicago Public Beach opened Lincoln Park 1895.

Today, entire 28 miles (45 ) Chicago lakefront shoreline -. There twenty lakefront beaches Chicago along shore Lake Michigan. Two located within y parks. Currents action Lake Michigan north south, where eventually p Indiana Dunes. Winter storms erode Chicago's beaches, deposit others, requiring Park District supplement yearly. The Chicago Lifeguard Service force largest nation, employing thousand guards summer (between Memorial Day weekend Labor Day weekend). Chicago swimable guarded waterfront y single municipality world. While y patrons complain about cleanliness the water, Chicago boasts cleanest urban waterfront United States, second world only Stockholm; water tested daily y Chicago Park District E. other dangers.