Quote:
Originally Posted by hammersklavier
In the bulk of possible scenarios, St. Louis would be the American interior's dominant city. There's a reason why Cahokia's ruins are to be found in the St. Louis metro: the region was the greatest crossroads of trade routes to be found on the continent when trade would have been conducted primary or exclusively via navigation. It is in St. Louis where the main north-south trade route running up the Mississippi meets the main east-west one running down the Ohio and up the Missouri.
Had St. Louis had time to claim its primate role before the railroads came, it is unlikely Chicago would have surpassed it.
That said, a major city was destined to grow up in the Chicago area, sitting, as it does, at the best portage between the Mississippi River and Great Lakes systems, and with the straight-shot trade route linking it with St. Louis that is the Illinois River, there are many many alternate history (and dystopian future!) scenarios you can imagine where the Illinois River valley becomes the heartland of significant empires stretching across the interior Midwest.
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for sure. st. louis was fortuitously sited for greatness.
but the machinations of man often supersede the illusory notion of geographic predestination.
entire books have been written on why chicago, and not st. louis, became the interior alpha, but two of the biggies are:
1. the erie canal. once new york city, with its unparalleled deep water port, was connected to the bounty of the great lakes via the erie canal, the lakes themselves became the main east-west transportation waterway system in the country. not only did the canal further fuel NYC's rise as the east coast alpha, but all of that newly amassed new york capital saw chicago, sited at the opposite end of that waterway system, as the clear choice in the interior to bet big on.
2. the civil war. situated ~250 miles SW of chicago, st. louis was a lot closer to the turmoil that ripped the nation asunder (and located in a state with divided allegiances to boot), which scared away investors and drove yet even more capital to chicago.