Shipyard On The Prairie
Seneca's World War II Legacy
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Canal Stories, a series brought to you by the Canal Corridor Association to celebrate the 175th anniversary of the Illinois & Michigan Canal and the communities that were shaped by its legacy. Times of war have a way of creating heroes in the most unlikely places. Today, we’re exploring how a quiet prairie town in north central Illinois helped turn the tide of World War II, through the production of Landing Ship Tanks that were essential for transporting troops and supplies across the seas. It’s time to pay tribute to our very own Seneca, Illinois, and the legendary Prairie Shipyard. This story comes to us from an article by David Young, which was originally published in the Chicago Tribune on November 7th, 2004.
When Navy Lt. George Myers was assigned to a ship bound for the Pacific to fight the Japanese in World War II, he was somewhat surprised when his orders sent him to a small town in north central Illinois to board it. While Myers had grown up on a farm in downstate Hoopeston, and had gotten his degree from the University of Illinois, he couldn't imagine why he and the crew, who had received their training in Virginia, suddenly found themselves in a sleepy river town called Seneca.
As it turned out, their ship, LST 635, had been built on the prairie there and was waiting in the Illinois River for them when they arrived.
"We were put on a troop train and sent to Seneca to get our ship,” recalled Myers. “I remember our train car didn't have air conditioning, and it was sweltering. So, we had to leave the windows open, and the smoke from the engine turned our white uniforms black."
Of all the lore of the Great Lakes and its connecting waterways—disasters, colorful characters, and the motley assortment of boats and ships that sailed on them—none is stranger than the Prairie Shipyard. It arose in a matter of months from a weed-infested river bottom, more than a thousand miles from the nearest salt water, to build ocean-going warships. Three years later, it was disassembled, leaving no trace.
Even the type of ship it built, the LST, is fading from memory. LST stands for Landing Ship Tank, an ungainly, low-profile, shallow-draft vessel designed and mass produced in a hurry for large-scale amphibious warfare. The LSTs were built in such quantity that the U.S. Navy, for the most part, didn't even bother to name them. They were known simply by number.
The LSTs were incredibly valuable, able to bring tanks, vehicles, cargo, and landing troops directly onto beaches, without the need for docks or piers. The large doors in their bows allowed them to easily release the men and materials necessary to liberate North Africa, Italy, Normandy, and countless Pacific islands from the grip of the Axis powers.
The U.S. did not have enough salt-water shipyards when the war began, certainly not enough to build the more than a thousand LSTs that were needed, so it pressed into service several assorted barge and towboat shipyards along the Mississippi River tributaries. When this tactic also proved to be insufficient, the government built a shipyard in Seneca, about 75 miles southwest of Chicago, and dubbed it the Prairie Shipyard.
At its peak, the shipyard employed 11,000 workers. Union workers were paid $1.20 per hour, while laborers received 0.83¢ per hour. The massive boom of workers and their families into Seneca required substantial investment in housing and infrastructure.
"It was quite a deal when the shipyard came in," recalled Peg Davis, whose mother worked at the facility, and who herself was employed at an explosives factory across the river. "We were a small town of 1,200, and we became 10,000 overnight."
Fortunately, the Illinois River had been upgraded with new locks and dams in the 1930s, enabling it to carry large ships to the Mississippi and then to the Gulf of Mexico. The new locks were built 600 feet long and 110 feet wide, to accommodate a towboat pushing eight barges, so they could easily handle a 328-foot-long, 50-foot-wide LST.
The only other outlet from the Great Lakes to the ocean was the St. Lawrence River, which, at the time, had locks that were only 270 feet long. The St. Lawrence Seaway, with standard 730-foot locks, wasn't built until after WWII.
The Illinois River became the route taken not only by LSTs and repair ships from Seneca, but also assorted landing craft built in Chicago, and submarines manufactured on Lake Michigan, in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. The submarines were towed down the river on specially-built dry docks, to prevent their fragile hulls from being damaged on the riverbeds.
Because the LSTs were built with a shallow enough draft to nestle up to beaches and discharge their cargo, they could negotiate the rivers under their own power. They could float in as little as 7 feet, 6 inches of water, and the river channels were 9 feet deep. At sea, their ballast tanks were filled with water, allowing them to ride lower and negotiate the waves.
"It was exciting for the local people to see those big ships on the river. Everyone in town turned out," said Myers. "The bridges would be lined with local people as we passed. Our LST barely cleared some of those bridges, and the people on them would toss us packs of cigarettes."
During its brief time of operation, the Prairie Shipyard built 157 LSTs, although 28 of them were converted into repair ships. Though the shipyard itself vanished from existence in just a few short years, the citizens of Seneca do all they can to honor its legacy and keep its story alive, as seen in their annual Seneca Shipyard Days Festival, which celebrates the town’s unique history and contributions to the war effort. To learn more about the Prairie Shipyard, and other eras of Seneca’s past, you can visit our friends at the Seneca Area Heritage Museum.
That concludes today’s Canal Story. Thank you so much for joining us as we continue our journey through the history of the Illinois & Michigan Canal. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, pass it along to your family and friends, be sure to leave us a like or drop us a comment, and we’ll see you again very soon.