Chicago River on a Foggy Morning

"201. Chicago River on a Foggy Morning. Copyright, 1898 by T. W. Ingersoll"

Reverse: "No. 201. Chicago River on a Foggy Morning.

Joliet and Marquette in 1673 discovered the fact that the Indians used the Chicago river as a means of reaching the Mississippi river. Passing up its south branch as far as possible, a portage of four or five miles brought them to the Desplaines river and so to the father of streams. The French later kept a fort at the portage, but it was of little importance and was little used. John Kinzie, the first American to settle at Chicago, bought his house in 1803 from a French trader, who himself had acquired it from a colored man from San Domingo who built it about the year 1777.

Not before 1816, after the New Fort Dearborn had taken the place of that destroyed in the massacre of 1812, could a small village grow up on the banks of the Chicago river. In 1830 the hamlet consisted of less than a hundred people, living in log houses. The building of the Illinois and Michigan canal gave the necessary first impetus to that immigration which has never stopped since. In 1834 the first schooner sailed up the river.Today the tonnage of shipping in Chicago is eight millions a year. Our picture represents the wide expanse of the river, one of the massive warehouses on its banks and one of the many bridges that span it.

A8523

• Chicago
  Illinois, United States
  

  Latitude: 41.85003 Longitude: -87.65005