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“The city would not have gone up if it were not for the manipulation of the resources in the surrounding more rural areas (Ralrich25)” this quote that I pulled from last weeks posts eptiomizes what chapter 2 of what Natures Metropolis is about because in it Cronon talks about how the people of Chicago bruise and abuse the land to make it bend to their will. Given Chicago’s location, the people of the city tried to utilitize the lake as transportation but “nature met ecery scheme with more sand, and the harbor continued to be a problem long into the future (Cronon 56).” This sort of made me laugh, not because it was funny that thousands of dollars were wasted to build the harbor but because it seemed as if nature was trying to stop them from buidling the harbor by negating every move they did with more sand. After time the people realized the lakes and canals were cumbersome they turned to railroads; as I was reading this section I was amazed how just 31 miles of rail could turn into 2,500 in just a matter of years (Cronon 68). Prior to this reading I never reazlied how important of a city Chicago really was, I was blind to the fact that it was an important city in trade as well as in transportation. For example, Chicago was an important place in the devlopment in the railroad, although railroads may have started in other places most passed through Chicago. The map of the railroads on page 69 showed a spiderweb of tracks that crisscrossed the land; land that was prevously free of train tracks. In my opinion, these first two chapters have shown the growth of Chicago but have also explained the ways in which the enviorment was destroyed.