High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Archer Avenue, also known as Archer Road outside the Chicago, Illinois city limits, is a diagonal thoroughfare running northeast-to-southwest between Chicago's Chinatown and Lockport, Illinois. Archer follows the old portage trail between the Chicago River and the Des Plaines River, and parallels the path of the Illinois and Michigan Canal and the Alton Railroad. The street was named after the first commissioner of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, William Beatty Archer. One early map of Chicago (ca. 1830) listed what may have been the future Archer Road as "The Road to Widow Brown's.