Chicago incorporated as a city in
1837 after being founded in 1833 near a portage between the Great
Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed. The city soon became a
major transportation hub in North America and the transportation,
financial and industrial center of the Midwest. Today the city's
attractions bring 44.2 million visitors annually.
Chicago became notorious worldwide for its violent
gangsters in the 1920s, most notably Al Capone, and for the political
corruption in one of the longest lasting political machines in the
nation. Chicago was once the capital of the railroad industry and
until the 1960s the world's largest meatpacking facilities were at
the Union Stock Yards. O'Hare International is one of the world's
busiest airports and the second busiest in the nation.
The city has long been a stronghold of the Democratic
Party and has been home to numerous influential politicians including
the current Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama. Chicago
is called the "Windy City", "Chi-Town", and the "City
of Broad Shoulders".
During the mid-18th century the area was inhabited
by Potawatomis, who had taken the place of the Miami and Sauk and
Fox peoples. The first permanent settler in Chicago, Haitian Jean
Baptiste Pointe du Sable, arrived in the 1770s, married a Potawatomi
woman, and founded the area’s first trading post. In 1803 the
United States Army built Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed in the
1812 Fort Dearborn massacre. The Ottawa, Ojibwa, and Potawatomi later
ceded the land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis.
On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population
of 350. Within seven years it grew to a population of over 4,000.
The City of Chicago was incorporated on March 4, 1837. The name "Chicago" is
the French rendering of the Miami-Illinois name shikaakwa, meaning “wild
leek.”[6][7][8] The sound shikaakwa in Miami-Illinois literally
means 'striped skunk', and was a reference to wild leek, or the smell
of onions.[7] The name initially applied to the river, but later
came to denote the site of the city.
The city began its step toward regional primacy
as an important transportation hub between the eastern and western
United States. Chicago’s first railway, Galena and Chicago
Union Railroad, opened in 1848, which also marked the opening of
the Illinois and Michigan Canal. The canal allowed steamboats and
sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River.
A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and
immigrants abroad. Manufacturing and retail sectors became dominant
among Midwestern cities, influencing the American economy, particularly
in meatpacking, with the advent of the refrigerated rail car and
the regional centrality of the city's Union Stock Yards. |
