They are about to pop up on empty lots and street corners all over the area, those forests of evergreens.
Getting a Christmas tree is now as easy as getting a cup of coffee.
But in the 1880s many Chicagoans, mostly immigrants from Europe, could not get trees. Then some entrepreneurial boat captains decided to transport evergreens from the north. For decades, these boats would arrive in November and people crowded the Clark Street dock, waiting for a chance to buy Christmas trees.
It was a lucrative business: Trees purchased for 2 cents in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula could be sold for as much as 75 cents in Chicago. During the 1910s it was estimated that a cargo of trees was worth $75,000.
The trips were not without danger. The weather in November can get pretty nasty and in 1912 a ship named the Rouse Simmons went down with its captain and a crew of 16 off the coast of Wisconsin.
In 1995, Bailiwick Repertory’s John Reeger and Julie Shannon wrote a musical based on the wreck of the Rouse Simmons. It was called “The Christmas Schooner” and it will return for a third year with preview performances beginning Nov. 20 and a Nov. 24 opening.
Producer/director David Zak says that during previous shows he heard people say, “I was there, waiting at the dock. I bought trees on Clark Street.”
You can, of course, still buy trees on Clark Street, but getting one at a lot isn’t quite as romantic as waiting for one to arrive at a dock.
