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Fall
1998
[TEXT ARCHIVE WEB-PUBLISHED MARCH 2002.
ORIGINAL PRINT PUBLICATION DATE: FALL 1998.]
Timeline:
Chicago Wilderness
By
Jane Elder
400
million years ago
The climate is tropical and the warm Silurian Sea covers
the entire Mississippi Valley.
1
million years ago
Glaciers
covered most of North America. They advance and withdraw
as the climate cools and warms.
10,000
years ago
Prairies arrive in Illinois. Paleo-Indian hunters roam the
plains.
4,500
to 2,500 years ago
Early Woodland people occupy the Chicago region. They plant
small gardens, make stone carvings, build burial mounds,
and probably trade with distant peoples.
1673
Native
Americans guide French explorers Father Jacques Marquette
and Louis Joliet to the Chicago portage, the low spot in
the prairie and the vital link in the waterway between the
Great Lakes and the Mississippi River.
1779
Jean Baptist Point du Sable, an Afro-French-Canadian trapper
who was born in Santo Domingo, becomes the first non-native
American settler in Chicago.
1816
The Potawatomi tribe cedes a strip of land 10 miles wide
on either side of the mouth of the Chicago River that extends
southwest to the headwaters of the Illinois River. This
gives the United States control of the Chicago Portage route.
1832
Chief
Black Hawk's warriors cause white settlers of the Des Plaines
and DuPage areas to flee to Chicago, where the population
rises from 100 to 500 as a result.
1870
Three hundred thousand people live in Chicago, making it
the country's fastest growing metropolis.
1871
The Chicago fire burns large sections of the city, destroying
18,000 buildings, leaving 90,000 homeless and 300 dead.
Rebuilding begins immediately.
1890
Chicago's population reaches 1,000,000.
1903
Aaron Montgomery Ward, a millionaire merchant, wins his
battle to preserve the lake side of Michigan Avenue as parkland
for the city. Every building except the Art Institute of
Chicago is torn down.
1909
Daniel H. Burnham and Edward H. Bennett's Chicago Plan proposes
city parks, forest preserves, and a public lakefront.
1915
The Forest Preserve District of Cook County, the first in
the nation, is established.
1942
The Atomic Age begins on December 2 with the world's first
sustained nuclear reaction at the University of Chicago.
1992
An underground tunnel collapses and Loop office buildings
are flooded by Chicago River water.
1996
Chicago Wilderness, a partnership of organizations for protection,
restoration, and stewardship of 200,000 acres of wild lands
and native species in the Chicago metropolitan area, is
established.
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