The Fox River has seen ice jams many times over the years.

The last of January, 1855, witnessed a great storm and flood, extending over several States and doing vast damage everywhere, this county not excepted. At Ottawa the principal loss was the destruction of the Illinois River bridge, then but about two years old. Up to the evening of Saturday, Jan. 31, and as long as the ice from the Illinois River came square upon the piers, they bore the pressure without sign of giving way; but on that evening, when the ice came out of Fox River, borne on a drifting current of six or seven miles an hour, and striking the piers from a quartering direction, they could resist the shock no longer, and before midnight an ominous crashing heard in that direction above the roar of the ice showed that the noble bridge had shared the fate of so many others and gone down before the flood.

Daylight on Sunday morning revealed the extent of the ruin. The trestle-work and the second pier from the north shore had entirely disappeared, taking down with them the entire bridge to the third pier, leaving the two south spans still resting on the piers so shattered as to be barely able to carry their weight. The woodwork of the bridge lodged on an island near Utica, and a portion of it was recovered.

The cost, however, of repairing the damage exceeded half the original coat of the bridge. At the time of this disaster the water rose a foot above the highest point touched since the county was settled, the point mentioned being reached in 1849.

Some damage was done to the Fox River bridge. Considerable property was injured and carried off from the low ground on the east side of Fox River. Messrs. Fredenburgh, Smeaton and Van Gaebeck, living next to the bridge, were obliged to emigrate, and lost in fences, hay, wagons, etc., seriously. Persons living on the south side of Main street, east of Fox River, who had their stables on low ground, all lost something. Below the hydraulic basin, south of the main part of the city, some damage was done. On the low ground in Ottawa Center about a dozen houses, generally small and occupied by poor people, were submerged to the roof and the contents ruined where not carried off.

The chief disaster at Dayton was the destruction of the fine bridge erected by the people four or five years before at an expense of some $4,000, It was taken off bodily, leaving nothing but the naked abutment The feeder was so injured that mills could not run for a month or so. Some sixty or seventy rods of the bank were swept away and the lock was seriously damaged.

At Peru and La Salle the damage was pretty heavy. At the latter place all the lower stories of the buildings on the canal basin were submerged, and much fear was entertained with reference to the fleet of loaded canal boats in the basin, but they appear not to have suffered much. At Peru the fine stone freight house of the Rock Island Railroad had its whole east side knocked out Several loaded canal-boats were sunk, and some warehouses and other buildings damaged in various ways.¹

1. History of La Salle County, Illinois, 2 vols. (Chicago: Inter-State Publishing Co., 1886), 1, 451-452.