Where did Chicago get its start? At old Ft. Dearborn? No. On Mayor Richard Daley’s street in Bridgeport? No. At the Water Tower Place shopping mall? No.
Try the gritty little scrap of urban landscape at 48th Street and Harlem Avenue, unremarkable in appearance but pivotal in bringing Chicago into worldwide prominence as a center of commerce and industry.
“This place is Chicago’s Plymouth Rock,” said Steve Mechanic, director of a state historic preservation office that is promoting the educational and tourism value of the site. “It’s been called our sacred ground.”
Sandwiched between the Sanitary and Ship Canal and a railroad track, the site has a parking lot and a statue of Pere Marquette and Louis Joliet, who were guided there by natives in 1673. It was the scene of a commemorative event last week to promote a curriculum package produced by a consultant for the Illinois & Michigan Canal National Heritage Corridor Civic Center Authority.
The 48th and Harlem site is part of the Chicago Portage, the few miles of high ground that separated the south branch of the Chicago River and the rest of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River watershed from the Des Plaines River, which is part of the Mississippi River watershed, said Mechanic.
Information is available at www.civiccenterauthority.org/.
