Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
own water travels over centuries of
moving throughout this territory.
Marquette himself was on the most
familiar terms with the Native Ameri-
cans, who helped him make his way
over the well-established paths of their
ancestral lands. The Native Ameri-
cans, of course, did not anticipate the
European settlers' hunger for such
prime real estate. Because the Chicago
River provided a crucial link between
the Great Lakes and the Mississippi
River, the frontier city was destined to
grow into the nation's great midconti-
nental hub of transportation and
transshipment, facilitating travel and
trade between the eastern settlements
and the West.
FIRST SETTLEMENT
Over the next 100 years, the French
used this waterway to spread their
American empire from Canada to
Mobile, Alabama. Yet the first
recorded settlement in Chicago, a
trading post built by a French Cana-
dian of Haitian descent, Jean Baptiste
Point du Sable, did not appear until
1781. By this time the British already
had conquered the territory, part of
the spoils of 70 years of intermittent
warfare that cost the French most of
their North American holdings. After
the American War of Independence,
the Illinois Territory was wrested from
British/Native American control in a
campaign led by the Revolutionary
War hero Gen. “Mad” Anthony
Wayne, which ended with a treaty in
1795 ceding the land around the
mouth of the Chicago River to the
United States.
Between du Sable's day and 1833,
when Chicago was officially founded,
the land by the mouth of the Chicago
River served as a military outpost that
guarded the strategic passage and pro-
vided security for a few trappers and a
trading post. The military base, Fort
Dearborn, which stood on the south
side of what is now the Michigan
1865
After Lincoln's assassination, his
body lies in state at the Chicago Court-
house before burial in Springfield.
More than 125,000 mourners pay
their respects.
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1865
Chicago stockyards are founded.
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1870
City's population numbers
almost 300,000, making it perhaps the
fastest-growing metropolis in history.
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1871
Great Chicago Fire burns large
sections of the city; rebuilding begins
while the ashes are still warm.
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1882
The 10-story Montauk Building,
the world's first skyscraper, is erected.
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1885
William Le Baron Jenney's nine-
story Home Insurance Building, the
world's first steel-frame skyscraper, is
built.
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1886
Dynamite bomb explodes dur-
ing a political rally near Haymarket
Square, causing a riot in which eight
policemen and four civilians are killed,
and almost 100 are wounded. Eight
labor leaders and socialist-anarchists,
demanding an 8-hour day, are later
convicted in one of the country's most
controversial trials. Four are eventually
hanged.
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1892
The city's first elevated train
goes into operation.
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1893
Completely recovered from the
Great Fire, Chicago hosts its first
World's Fair, the World's Columbian
Exposition. The world's first Ferris
wheel is a big draw.
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1894
Led by Eugene V. Debs, mem-
bers of the American Railway Union
hold a massive strike against the Pull-
man Palace Car Company; President
Grover Cleveland calls in federal
troops after 2 months, ending the
strike.
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1900
The flow of the Chicago River is
reversed to end the dumping of
sewage into Lake Michigan.
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1905
Wobblies, or Industrial Workers
of the World (IWW), is founded in
Chicago.
■
1905
Robert S. Abbott founds the
Chicago Defender,
which becomes the
nation's premier African-American
newspaper and later plays a major
role in encouraging Southern blacks
to move north during the “Great
Migration” years.
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