She is now remembered chiefly for being mentioned by Chicago writer Nelson Algren, in Algren’s prose-poem, Chicago: City on the Make: “Who now knows the sorrowful long-ago name of the proud steamer Chicora, down with all hands in the ice off South Haven?” as well as “Sunk under the ice in the waves off South Haven, sunk with all hands for good and forever, for keeps and a single day.” Chicora, a wooden-hulled, screw-propelled, passenger-cargo ship, was built in 1892 by the Detroit Drydock Company of Detroit, Michigan, for the Graham & Morton Transportation Company.

Her passenger cabins, grand staircase and gangways were all finished in mahogany, and an electric plant provided power for the ship's 250 lights.

For freight service in the winter off-season, Chicora was built "especially stout" and had six-inch (15 cm) outer planking and three waterproof compartments.

Chicora was powered by a 2,500 horsepower (1,900 kW), triple-expansion steam engine with cylinders of 20, 33 and 54 inches (51, 84 and 137 cm) and 42 inches (110 cm) stroke, driving a single screw propeller, while steam was provided by two steel forced-draft Scotch boilers with a working pressure of 165 pounds.

[2] Portions of wreckage of the missing vessel-consisting of the Port side and forward upper bulwarks five feet (1.5 m) wide and 12 feet (3.7 m) long along with the passenger gangway were found a mile on the ice near South Haven, Michigan.

[5][6] On 19 April 1895 a witness claimed to have seen the Chicora stern down and bow up in the lake between South Haven and Saugatuck, Michigan, on 23 January 1895.

A week later a jar was found in Illinois containing a note reading "Chicora engines broke.