Eastland Disaster · Prohibition-Era Chicago · Bubbly Creek · Chicago River History
Wateriders was founded in 1997 and has operated continuously as Chicago's longest-running urban kayak rental and tour company. The downtown location at the East Bank Club, 500 N. Kingsbury Street, is the staging area for guided river tours; additional facilities operate at 3057 N. Rockwell Street in the Northwest Side and at 1200 W. 35th Street on Bubbly Creek in Bridgeport.
The Ghosts and Gangsters Kayak Tour is a 2.5-hour small-group evening paddle. Guides narrate the city's Prohibition-era organized crime history — Jim Colosimo, Johnny Torrio, and Al Capone — alongside Chicago River disaster history, most prominently the 1915 Eastland sinking, which killed 844 Western Electric employees and family members on the river bank near the modern company location. The tour also references Bubbly Creek, the south branch tributary that for decades served as a dumping ground for the Union Stock Yards and is the subject of documented river-quality and ghost lore alike.
The tour costs $65 per adult and $45 for participants under sixteen. Booking is handled through Wateriders' Peek booking platform; small group sizes are typical, and basic paddling instruction is included for first-time kayakers. Tours run seasonally with sunset and evening departures.
Sources
- https://wateriders.com/tour/ghosts-and-gangsters-tour/
- https://wateriders.com/downtown/ghost-gangsters-tour/
- https://www.viator.com/tours/Chicago/Chicago-River-Ghosts-and-Gangsters-Kayak-Tour/d673-7396KAYAK2
Phantom voicesPhantom smellsCold spotsPhantom footstepsResidual haunting
The Eastland disaster of July 24, 1915 is the tour's anchor stop. The SS Eastland, an excursion steamer chartered by Western Electric for an employee outing to Michigan City, rolled onto its side at the dock between Clark and LaSalle streets while still moored to the river bank. Eight hundred forty-four passengers died, including twenty-two entire families. The Second Regiment Armory — later Harpo Studios, then partially demolished — served as the temporary morgue. Guides cite reports collected from Harpo staff during the studio's operating years describing phantom voices and footsteps in the building.
Bubbly Creek, the south fork of the south branch of the Chicago River, was the disposal point for waste from the Union Stock Yards from the late 19th century until the yards' final closure in 1971. The water was famously described in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle as so loaded with grease and offal that birds could walk across it. The creek bubbled — and continues to bubble — from decomposing material on its bottom. Tour guides include riverbank reports of the smell of slaughterhouse smoke on still evenings, and accounts collected from current Bridgeport residents who describe unexplained noises along the creek's east bank.
The Capone-era material is anchored to specific addresses: the former Lexington Hotel site, the Four Deuces speakeasy site, and the location of the Colosimo restaurant murder. The 2.5-hour pace allows guides to develop these stories at length.
