Some of you will soon be visiting us in Chicago, so I thought it well to give you an introduction that may help you appreciate our city.

Not a guidebook-style introduction, mind you. In the stores you can choose among plenty of guidebooks, to find one suitable to your interests. Any attempt to list Chicago sights here would be, at best, episodic.

Rather, I'm going to try to give you a flavor of Chicago history.

For those willing to do a bit of reading on Chicago's history, I highly recommend, from library or bookstore, Nature's Metropolis by William Cronon (under $10 at Amazon). It's completely unnecessary to read the whole thing, though. Just the three chapters on the grain, lumber and meat industries, respectively, will give you a fine background; if you want more, add the chapter on the railroads.

More to follow tomorrow.

I can confirm the excellence of this publication. But as Shu says, you don't need to read it all; the first chapters are primarily about the methodology and sources that the author used and these, while adding to the verisimilitude of the work are quite heavy going.

. . .Why is Chicago here? Why did a settlement arise in the particular location we called "Chicago"?
. . .In early days it made sense to settle on a river or a shore or, even better, the outlet of a river, where it meets the shore. Consider: with land travel (whether by foot or by horse) you can't carry much with you. Even a wagonload is not much, and wagons can only be used on routes well-traveled enough that folks have bothered to create and maintain a dirt road. So a settlement for trading goods brought in solely by land can serve only a small radius and a small number of people. Water transport, by contrast, is far easier, and a suitable boat easily carries far more goods than just a wagonload. (Water transport is so efficient that, even when we have railroads, we still it for goods, such as gravel, which have small value per pound.) For that reason, most major cities of the world sit on a river, where goods can come and go by water.
. . .Now, Chicago is indeed at a river outlet, near the extreme southwest point of the Great Lakes, where the Chicago River flows into Lake Michigan. But that river is, frankly, a lousy river on which to build trade routes. It is short and swampy, and the harbor at its outlet tends to silt over.

. . .So why did a people congregate at the mouth of that river, rather some other river outletting into Lake Michigan?

So why did people congregate at the mouth of the Chicago River, rather some other river outletting into Lake Michigan? The answer is a geographic trait unique to the continent of North America.

Though Europe, Asia, Africa and Asia have large rivers, no one river drains any substantial fraction of the continent. (Yes, the Nile is long, but it has few tributaries. And Asia is so land-locked that the entire vast USSR had only two ports leading to the open sea: Arkhangel (which is frozen over much of the year) and Vladivostok.) In South America one river-system, the Amazon and its tributaries, drains much of the continent.

Only North American has two dominant river-systems, the Great Lakes/St. Laurence, and the Mississippi River (and tributaries Missouri and Ohio), which outlet in east Canada and in New Orleans respectively. With two dominant river systems, obviously there would be great importance to places where it is easy to get from one to the other. Goods moved through those places could travel a vast distance, almost all of it by water, with only a short portage by land.

During early Europeans settlement of North America, France controlled both these major river-system outlets (Great Britain controlled the Atlantic seaboard), and so had a particular interest in finding good connecting points. So France sent explorers west from Montreal, through the waters, to find a route to New Orleans. They took some likely-looking river west from Lake Michigan, followed it to its headwaters, and then carried their canoes on a land-trek west until they found a river flowing west, leading them eventually to the Mississippi.

But when the French headed back for Montreal, the native Indians, who of course had already explored the area, told them of a better route with a shorter portage. The French took this route, up the Mississippi River to the Illinois (above St. Louis) and its tributaries, and then by a very short portage to the Chicago River. Eventually, a fort was established at the mouth of the Chicago.

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As it turns out, there are five decent places to connect between the two major river-systems. Of these Chicago is the most variable: best in the wet season, but worst in the dry season. In fact, in wet times it required no portage at all! A shallow swampy lake (Mud Lake) would form, whose water spilled out both east and west. Men could canoe to Mud Lake (from Lake Michigan, via the Chicago River), then through the muck (with the men getting out to push), and then out from the lake's west outlet, leading eventually to the Mississippi – without ever unloading the boat.

But during dry season Mud Lake and its western outlet dried up, and Chicago would be the longest of the five portages. Still, it would be the best to settle, for the dry-season defect could eventually be cured by digging a connecting canal. That was so obvious that the very explorers who discovered the Chicago portage already realized the possibility of a canal.

[Personal note: that's the standard story, but several rivers flow into Lake Michigan only few miles south of the Chicago River. Why wouldn't any of them do just as well? Hard to tell, since those rivers have been much-altered by modern drainage engineers. But one little mention in one old book suggests to me why the Chicago River was preferred. It suggests that the Indian tribes there happened to have squaws who were (ahem) "more cooperative" with the needs of the early settlers and travelers.]

Let's talk about that canal, switching colors to show switch of topics.

The US government anticipated the general route of a future canal. By a 1795 treaty with a coalition of Indians tribes, it acquired "six miles square, at the mouth of Chikago river," plus right of passage from there, via portage and rivers, to the Mississippi. By an 1816 treaty it acquired specific area: a 20-mile wide corridor running southwest from Lake Michigan (above and below the mouth of the Chicago river) to the Fox and "Depleines" rivers. The lines between which this corridor lies are called the Indian Boundary Lines.

Surveyors came to survey the wilderness into a checkerboard pattern, placing monuments at the corners of sections of 1 square mile each. Land tended to be sold by whole or fractional section. Now obviously, any landowner wants a road for access, but prefers that it run along the border of his property rather than through the middle. So roads tended to form on the section lines.

Unfortunately, the surveyors had goofed in setting those lines. Perhaps one set of surveyors had worked the corridor between the Indian Boundary Lines, another set to the north, and another set to the south. In any event, the section lines failed to meet where they hit the Indian Boundary Lines. As a result, even today the roads (following the section lines) must "jog" where they hit those lines. The jog along the north boundary line happens to be small, but the jog at the south line is substantial.

Why are those big jogs relevant to today's Chicago? Two reasons.

With those big jogs in the road it was always awkward to travel from the south lands to the heart of the city. Because of this, the part of Chicago south of the Indian Boundary Line has never developed well, and has always been a poor and relatively empty area.

Any land that lies precisely on that line is very awkward to use, since its exact borders are hard to locate and will have big jogs, creating odd shapes. Thus it's less valuable and more likely to stay vacant. That's why, when the state built one of our super-highways, it chose to run a goodly stretch of it precisely along the south Indian Boundary Line. It had to pay less for that land, and often didn't have to pay for any building on it.

We now switch from Chicago history to tell the huge fraud by which Illinois became a state.

When the U.S. achieved independence, England's lands had extended as far west as the Mississippi river, but all population was on the east. Six colonies had claims to the empty westerly lands. The other seven, fearing the six would dominate any union, insisted as a condition to joining the new union that the west lands be ceded to the new federal government for eventual creation of new states.

This being done, the new government promptly created by ordinance a "template" for how states would formed in the "Northwest Territory" (west lands north of the Ohio River). (This covers a bit more than five of today's states.) An area could petition for statehood upon reaching 60,000 population. And the territory was tentatively divided into five areas: a west, middle and south area, with the west and middle ones divided into upper and lower parts by an east-west line running (and this is crucial for our story) through the southern tip of Lake Michigan (below Chicago). Thus, the south-west and south-central portions touched the lake only at a single point, each having a northerly corner at the lake's southern tip.

After the far-east part of the territory (Ohio) achieved statehood, the south-central part (Indiana, lacking lake frontage) petitioned for statehood. At its request the east-west line (its upper boundary) was shifted slightly northward, to give it enough lake-frontage to form a port. But even with that shift, Chicago was still north of the line.

Come 1816 some local Illinois local politicians wanted statehood, mainly to have more offices availble (governor, federal congressmen, state congressmen) to advance their careers. Unfortunately, Illinois had nowhere near 60,000 population. Their solution?

They asked that only 35,000 be required (at the time the district of a representative in Congress averaged 35,000 people). Congress settled on 40,000.

Citing the Indiana precedent, they got their northern border moved still farther north, arguing that without northern access, the state would tend to be southern in orientation (North-south disputes were brewing that eventually led to our Civil War.) Their true goal was to pick up the population of Galena, a lead-mining town on the Mississippi River. Chicago's then-trivial population was of no importance. But the line-shift brought Chicago within the new Illinois boundary, rather than in Wisconsin.

Finally, innocently noting that the federal government was so far away, they suggested that local officials should conduct the census.

Of course, once the locals got control of the census they engaged it a wild spree of fraudulent counting. I'll spare you the details. And when they saw that they still wouldn't reach 40,000, the census commissioners in the biggest county suspended operations "to tend to their harvests," giving them more time to "find" more people. Eventually, in 1818, Illinois squeaked by with a figure (as I recall) of 40,286 supposed people. Illinois is the lowest-populated area to ever be a "state" in the union, before or since.

[I've read authorities stating that the fraud is shown by the fact that two years later, even though Illinois had obviously grown, the regular 1820 federal census showed fewer than 40,000 people. But I'm unable to confirm the 1820 figure; the web says otherwise.]

Almost thirty years later, when Wisconsin was becoming a state, it asked that its border with Illinois be shifted back south to its previous position. It even offered in return to give Illinois one of its two seats in the U.S. Senate. Illinois' answer? "Thanks, but no thanks."

What I've told you about Mud Lake may alert you to the important fact the terrain of the Chicago area is extraordinarily flat. That flatness is what created Mud Lake and gave made Chicago a strategically important place to control.

But the same flatness made Chicago a terrible place to live, for there is simply no natural drainage for rainwater. In the early days it was notorious that that Chicago's dirt streets were a morass of mud for much of the year. One young mother wrote thus:

I should have written long before
But trouble entered at my door
And with it I am quite bowed o'er,
. . . . . . . . . . .The mud.

I strove to visit you last week
But went no farther than the street
Ere I was buried up complete
. . . . . . . . . . .The mud.

All whom I met wore faces new
Bespattered all and sad to view
With skirts most heavy laden too
. . . . . . . . . . .The mud.

At home from school the children came
I durst not call them one by name
To tell my own I tried in vain
. . . . . . . . . . .The mud.

Indoors all things with blackness spread
E'en to our butter and our bread
And out doors nigh up to your head
. . . . . . . . . . .The mud.

I looked within the glass today
But frightened, hasted fast away
By beauteous face was inky clay
. . . . . . . . . . .The mud.

Afflictions not from ground arise
If that is so, I have no eyes
You'll not see me until it dries,
. . . . . . . . . . .The mud.

It wasn't just rainwater that failed to drain. As the number of people (and their horses) grew, the sewage from their excrement also failed to drain, and became an increasing problem. The city suffered epidemics of diseases, such as cholera, which are related to poor sanitation.

Eventually the city settled on the only practical solution: raise the streets, to create draining space below them. The process took about two decades. Today it's not readily visible, but in a few places you can still see that the streets have been raised. And it becomes visible, on occasion, when a building is torn down to make room for a new one.