12 American Towns They Called "Little Chicago" — One Was Burned Down

Anacortes, Washington, March 25, 1957: the port burns the last of a waterfront neighborhood the whole town called Little Chicago. Why that shore got the name of America's most notorious city is the final answer in this film, and it's not the one you'd expect. Twelve places that wore the nickname, and the reason each one did: Little Chicago, Wisconsin, a crossroads that kept the name for good; Minot, North Dakota, dry since statehood in 1889 and a short drive from Canada; Johnson City, Tennessee, three railroads and a Capone legend nobody can prove; Sioux City, Iowa, where a minister was shot in 1886 and a newsboy grew up to run the Flamingo; Shakopee, Minnesota, the Twin Cities' back room; Mansfield, Ohio, on the Lincoln Highway; Canton, Ohio, where editor Don Mellett was killed in 1926; Bowling Green, Kentucky, and the stream under downtown called Whiskey Run; Hamilton, Ohio, and John Dillinger's October of 1933; New Kensington, Pennsylvania, and the Mannarino brothers; Youngstown, Ohio, the city a magazine renamed Crimetown USA; and the tide flat in Anacortes. Did your town have a nickname it would rather forget, or one it throws a festival for? Write the town and the nickname in the comments. Along the way: the Pulitzer Prize the Canton Daily News won in 1927, the federal agent's slingshot line about Mansfield in 1921, the Lima jailbreak that cost Sheriff Jess Sarber his life, a planeload of stolen guns seized on its way to Cuba in 1958, and seventy-five bombings counted by the Saturday Evening Post in 1963. All of it is drawn from county historical societies, the Anacortes Museum, the Sioux City Public Museum, FBI files, court outcomes and the newspapers of the day. Where a story is only local legend, the film says so. Image credits: 30 photos from Wikimedia Commons / Openverse (CC BY 2.0, CC BY-SA 3.0, public domain) by Richie Diesterheft, dbking from Washington, DC, Chanilim714; archival film: Prelinger Archives (public domain); stock video: Pixabay. #americanhistory #littlechicago #prohibition #smalltownamerica