Don Wildman

The rivers, too, are crowded with boats and increasingly choked with waste.

It is growth without pause and not enough plan.

An unlikely city rising from uncertain ground and straining against it.

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Hello there, greetings, and welcome to American History Hit.

I'm Don Wildman, your host, and very glad to be speaking today about a city that looms large on the skyline of America's past and present.

Consider this.

So many towns and cities in this nation were founded after our colonial period.

This is a young nation still, but only one of those cities has become a mega city, a staging ground for so much of what has fueled the advances and innovations which made the United States the superpower it is today.

As that city grew in size and influence, it imposed itself upon American culture in every conceivable fashion.

And for that reason, it is often called, by me for one, the only true American metropolis.

That city is, of course, Chicago.

But the origins of Carl Sandburg's city of big shoulders are historically quite complicated.

And it says much about us that the real story of our third largest city is so little understood by so many.

So let's understand it.

How did Chicago really begin?

We discuss this today with Anne Durkin Keating, an author and scholar who has written extensively on the city in books like Building Chicago, Suburban Developers and the Divided Metropolis, Chicagoland, City and Suburbs of the Railroad Age, Chicago Neighborhoods and Suburbs, a Historical Guide, and what much of our conversation will concern today, Rising Up from Indian Country, Fort Dearborn and the Birth of Chicago, published in 2012.

Professor Keating, that is a breathless list of books there.

Welcome to the podcast.

Before we dive into the past, for our UK listeners especially who might not know much about Chicago, I'm going to fly through a couple of facts about this wonderful town.