History Snapshot

         HISTORY OF CHICAGO AND ILLINOIS

10000-8000 BC Paleo Indians roam the Area

8000-500 BC Archaic Indians inhabit forests, hunt deer and small game use stone tools

500 BC-900 AD Woodlands Indians develop maize build villages and burial mounds

900-1500 AD Misissippian culture improve agricultural methods

1673 Marquette and Joliet explore the Mississippi River. First European Explorers, friendly with the natives. Only 12 mile portage needed to connect Lake Michigan & Mississippi River

1680 LaSalle builds fort near present day St. Louis

1769 Illinois Indian tribes are trapped and starved near Fort St. Louis –now known as Starved Rock

1778 George Rogers Clark takes Kaskaskia and Vincennes, conquers west

1787 Illinois established as part of the Northwest Territory

1779 Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable French/African decent establishes trading post at the mouth of Chicago River

1803 For. Dearborn established at Wacker Dr. & Michigan Ave. Affirms U. S. dominance over Chicago River passage

1809 US Congress makes Illinois a territory

1812 Fort Dearborne Massacre

1818 Illinois Admitted as 21st State, a free State. First state Constitution established

1833 Chicago Harbor is dredged. Chicago incorporated into a Municipality

1848 I & M Canal completed connecting the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River, with Chicago as hub

1820 Vandalia becomes new state capital

1832 Black Hawk War drives out Sauk and Fox Indians

1837 Chicago becomes a city (population 4,000), John Deere
develops self scouring steel plow

1838 Springfield becomes state capital. National Road is completed from Cumberland Maryland to Vandalia

1839 Mormons driven from Nauvoo

1847 Cyrus McCormick begins manufacturing wheat reapers in Chicago. 

1848 Second Constitution of Illinois ratified. Chicago Board of Trade organized. Illinois and Michigan Canal completed 

1851 Illinois Central Railroad is incorporated. ICRR is given every other section of land on each side of the road as an incentive to build. They sell it to settlers and were able to build the railroad.

1856 10 Railroads hubbed in Chicago, becomes railroad capital of the U. S. Chicago is the launching ground for western U. S. expansion

1871 Chicago Fire kills 300, leaves 100,000 homeless, burns an area 4 miles x 1 mile, including the entire downtown area

1865 Chicago Union Stockyards opened. 

1867 Illinois Industrial University established (later University of Illinois) 

1870 Third Constitution of Illinois ratified. Great Chicago fire. Over 18,000 buildings destroyed with losses of $200 million 

1873 Joseph Glidden of DeKalb develops barbed wire fencing, patented in 1874

1886 Haymarket Square bombing and riot in Chicago during a labor rally.

1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

1897 elevated "El" under construction

1900 Sanitary and Ship Canal reverses flow of Chicago River from Lake Michigan to the Des Plaines, Illinois, and Mississippi River, prevents sewage into Lake

1904 The Jungle by Upton Sincair published about Chicago Stockyards, leads to the Pure Food and Drug act 2 years later. 

1909 Burnham and Bennett’s Plan of Chicago - Lakefront protection, expanding roads & transportation, Forest Preserves

1922 A.E. Staley opens first commercial soybean-processing plant in Decatur. 

1933 Century of Progress World's Fair - 100th Anniversary of Incorporation of City
1939 Chicago adopts plans for system of “super highways”

1941 Work begins on mass production of Penicillin at the USDA Ag Research Center in Peoria. Mass production for the war Effort will be complete by 1944. 

1943 Chicago's first Subway constructed

1954 Ray Kroc opens first McDonald’s restaurant in Chicago

1995 CHA begins redevelopment plans, including demolition of highrises

1966 Illinois for the first time leads the nation in the export of agricultural and manufactured products.  

Chicago Population Changes

1833 3,000

1871 300,000

1900 1,700,000

1957 3,700,000

2012 2,700,000