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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.[4]
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.[5]
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.[9] |
