Welcome To Chicago SAFeDATA

Chicago (IPA: /??`k??go?/), is the largest city in the state of Illinois and the largest in the Midwest. With a populus of nearly 3 1,000,000 people, Chicago is the third largest city in the US. It is the anchor of the Chicago metropolitan area, commonly called Chicagoland, which has a populus of over 9.7 1,000,000 people in Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana, making it the third largest metropolitan area in the U.S. Rich in history and renowned for its historically-innovative and influential architecture, Chicago is classified as an alpha world city. The City of Chicago is almost entirely located in Cook County, with a small portion overlapping into DuPage County, while the metropolitan area extends over several counties. Located at the site of a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed, Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837. It rapidly became a major transportation hub, as well as the business, financial, and cultural capital of the Midwest. Since the Chicago World`s Fair of 1893, it has been regarded as one of the ten most influential cities in the world.

During the mid-18th century the Chicago area was inhabited primarily by Potawatomis, who took the place of the Miami and Sauk and Fox people. The first settler in Chicago, Haitian Jean Baptiste Pointe du Sable, arrived in the 1770s, married a Potawatomi woman, and founded the area’s first trading post. In 1803 the US Army built Fort Dearborn, which was annihilated in 1812 in the Fort Dearborn Massacre. The Ottawa, Ojibwa, and Potawatomi later ceded the land to the US in the Treaty of St. Louis of 1816. On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a populus of 350, and inside seven years it grew to a populus of over 4,000. The City of Chicago was incorporated on March 4, 1837.

Starting in 1848, the city became an important transportation center between the eastern and western US. Chicago’s first railway, Galena & Chicago Union Railroad, opened. The Illinois and Michigan Canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect through Chicago to the Mississippi River. A flourishing economy brought many new residents from rural communities and Irish US, Polish US, Swedish US, German US and numerous other immigrants. The city’s manufacturing and retail sectors dominated the Midwest and greatly influenced the US economy, with the Union Stock Yards dominating the meat packing trade.

After the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 annihilated a third of the city, including the entire central business district, Chicago experienced rapid rebuilding and growth. During Chicago`s rebuilding period, the world`s first skyscraper was constructed in 1885 using steel-skeleton construction.

In 1893, Chicago hosted the World`s Columbian Exposition on former marshland at the present location of Jackson Park. The Exposition drew 27.5 1,000,000 visitors, and is considered among the most influential world`s fairs in history. The University of Chicago had been founded one year earlier in 1892 on the same location. The term "midway" for a fair or carnival referred originally to the Midway Plaisance, a strip of park land that still runs through the University of Chicago campus and connects Washington and Jackson Parks.

The 1920s brought notoriety to Chicago as gangsters, including the notorious Al Capone, battled each other and law enforcement on the city streets during the Prohibition era. The 1920s also saw a major expansion in industry. The availability of jobs attracted African USs from the South. They arrived by the tens of thousands in the Great Migration.