The bronze artwork, created between 1907 and 1913, depicts five women arranged so that the fountains waterfall recalls the waterflow through the five Great Lakes of North America.

[7] Additionally, the legal environment for land use in Grant Park was in flux at the time the commission was made,[8] which caused delays in location selection.

[11] Benjamin Ferguson's 1905 $1 million charitable trust gift to "memorialize events in American History" funded The Fountain,[13] and many other public works in Chicago.

[14][15] As the city attempted to determine a policy for the fund's use, Taft argued for fountains, allegorical statuary, discreetly placed portrait busts, and the adornment of bridges and park entrances in order to create long-lasting beauty in addition to supporting the style of art he pursued.

[16] During the 1905–1906 year he began to place greater emphasis on sculpture in the classes he taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, while simultaneously refining earlier allegorical.

[16] The Municipal art League exhibition chairperson, Mrs. William F. Grower, decided to form a subcommittee to help satisfy public support for the work to be the first Ferguson fund commission.

[8] While the trustees remained silent, Taft sought wider public support by publishing a picture of Spirit of the Great Lakes in Century Magazine, which drew interest from Buffalo, New York as a host of the final work.

[9] Legal issues regarding land use intensified in 1910, and the Art Institute began to make modest plans for the fountain almost attached to the south wall of its own building.

[27] The dream that Chicago would be the epicenter of the sculpting universe had been bred during the World's Columbian Exposition twenty years earlier and rekindled with the Ferguson bequest.

[30] Taft's human form depictions of the lake failed to capture the imagery of contemporary literature as it related to the power and fury of nature and the heroism of those struggling against those forces in works such as those of Hamlin Garland, Charles Eugene Banks, Willa Cather, or Robert Morss Lovett.

[10] On the day of the dedication the Chicago Daily News expressed this point with a photomontage juxtaposition of Taft's fountain and Lake Michigan in all its fury.

was a contemporary issue involving confiscated Paul Chabas fully nude painting, the Roman Catholic Church, critics, art dealers and collectors.

[11] Chicago Tribune writers stood behind Taft's fountain using humor against what they described as a "streak of over-accentuated puritanism" that could adversely affect public art.

This was in keeping with Taft's penchant for classical inspiration although this was a loose association where the number of daughters was reduced from 49 to 5 and the artist's task did not seem to be nearly as cruel as the mythological one.