Chicago (1830s–1871): The City Before It Burned…

Chicago (1830s–1871): The City Before It Burned… Picture a low, soggy stretch of prairie where a sluggish river bends into a vast gray lake, and nothing about it looks like the beginning of anything. No roads, no skyline, just marsh grass, wild onion, and mud that never fully dries. The Potawatomi word for that onion smell was something close to “checagou,” and that’s where the name came from, long before anyone imagined a city standing here. By 1790, a Black freeman named Jean Baptiste Point du Sable had built a trading post near the river’s mouth, becoming the first permanent non-Indigenous settler on this ground, though almost nobody outside the fur trade had any reason to know his name. Thanks for riding along with me. If this pulled you in, hit that like button and subscribe, and drop a comment telling me which city or era you want me to explore next. Tags: Chicago history, history of Chicago, Great Chicago Fire, Chicago fire 1871, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, Fort Dearborn, Chicago founding, Illinois and Michigan Canal, Chicago Board of Trade, Union Stock Yards, Chicago Water Tower, Mrs. O’Leary’s cow, Abraham Lincoln Chicago, Wigwam 1860, Treaty of Chicago, 19th century America, American history, city history documentary #history #chicagohistory #historyfacts