, 1872-10-20
"THE SANDS"
a North Sid G EDlrI7 Corner.
TWenf y-to1tr Wears
Ago.
How the Buffalo Lighthouse Keeper
Came to Chicago, and His Latest
Lighthouse.
The Shore Aceretions".NoW $50 Became
$l60,00o..:And Other Matters
Thereunto Appertaining.

TAVosv""!1AnN V1AlA WAeIt1n
Thereunto Appertaining.
;. Did 7ou ever lear tell Of q the Sands: ~ No?
Then your sources of information lacked the
local police reports Of twenty-four years ago.,
which is Eo much perhaps to your benefit, and q
lack We do not set out to supply. But " tho
Sandal we're an institution that belong to one of
the darker pages Of our city annals. And if
there were no shadows how could We possess the
high lights in our pictures of humanity. Society
must have its outcasts. God help them. Ali
alongside the bright, leapins, banlfn1l flood OF
the wealth, the health, the purity, and religion,
and highest form Of enjoyment humanity can
know in enlightened communities, flows the
dark, noisome, and melancholy current fed by
human purlieus and slums. The debased man,
the degraded woman, the shattered and broker,
wrecks of better past; and, saddest of all. the
little ones foredoomed and predestined to a
birth in vice, and an early training
in 1nlQuity. We pity the man who
can 80 among the outcasts of society without q
deep sadness in his heart, or who can write OF
them and pick dreary puns out of their misery.
1t is one of the solemn mysteries Of Divine deal
: ing With His creatures, how the outcast shall
!. stand before his Maker and be adjudged beside
his more fortunate fellow-men.
'. When the young city of Chicago began we'll
along in the forties, to take on the semblance OF
, city existence, the forlorn population whose
only vocation swings between vagabondage and
brigandage, had a hard time Of it. Every real
,estate owner looked to sell his lot, or take up
sudden fortune from. his subdivision immedi-
ately, and there was q vigorous sweeping and
mt ff fG +oF
desirable neighbors. So the low saloon-keeper
the shoulder-hitter, the harlot, and the rest Of
the hdeous caravan were driven from pillar to
post, until suddenly they came down upon 50 tho
sands," as the housemaid deposits pan Of
sweepings beside the alley fence.
You may imagine it was choice neighbor-
hood. If it was not popular one, it was speedi-
y populous. Shanties grew up in night in
long ranges Old rejected wooden tenements
craFled away from the early march of develop
ment on the North Side, and set up for them
Selves and presently swarmed like carrion car
cases on the Sands" Everybody was a squat
fer- Nobody paid any rent. Nobody ever sent
to !" the Sands for any collections of water tax,
nor gas, nor pew rent, nor church rate. It was
an Acadia of the antipodes order. From 1874,
tor twelve years. these desert Arabs Of Chicago
lived on an area Of yellow sand that drifted about
and into their shanties, WAS pitilessly bleak in
Mackinaw hreezes, and shone bIindingly in the
summer Suns.
And what we're the Sands? The currents have
always carried wash of eand sonthwardly
along this shore Of the lake to be caught
at any projecting point or pier, pro-
cess going on all along the shoro to-
day wherever any land proprietor is disposed
to push ont pier or even pile of brush into
the lake. In the elder day, when the shore was
free Of distinctions, as the old maps will show,
the North Side had actually the impudenco by
the asaaeE # thiaaaxar diff pusA-. spit Of
sand sheer across the mouth Of the Chicago
River, extending several blocks south Of the
present river line. Once huntsman chased
down and shot fox at the end Of this spit, and
ReJnard in his dyiE1 Agonies might have taken
his parting look squarely up Madison street,
only Madison street was not there, which was
bad for the fox; for il there had been Madison
street, the spit would have been done away with
long before, and the fox could not have met his
desth there,-Q. E. D. Twenty years later than
this fox came sly George Bates to the end OF
this eame spit, at that time Just under the great
Illinois Central depot, which he claimed as q
part df the North Side. But he met the fate Of
the other fox, IS you remember.
The time came to shut of the North Side spit.
In 1884 in the month OF February, Lieutenant
Anen,- .. 8. a., Was advertising in john Cal
houn'a Democrat for timber for piers. Before
Octuber,. with the work OF 100 men, he built two
lines OF wooden breakEater, confning the river
channel straight out into the lake. In February
OF 1e35a reatfreshet cut away deeply the sand
from between these piers. The Chicago River
was opened and arrivals began. Two years pre-
vidus, the small schooner that brought the now
venerable Captain Hugunin to Chicago had been
actually hauled across this disgusting spit with
ei1 yoke Of oxen. There was a lake arrival for
you. As the first token Of the marine 81 good
time coming" the "sp1endid schooner Illinois"
drove honest John Calhoun into spasm of job
type. When Captain Pickering, Of Sack
cts Aarbo5 II brought her s2a proudly Ra up
citizens Of our delighted city On board, Who, you
may be cure. in careful heed that the schooner
Illinois should have water enough to float in,
stoutly abstained from drinking that fluid all
day. When Lientengnt Aliens piers were I'm
ished, the sand could not drift along the shore,
and the rast accretions began, that by subsequent
extensions hare carried the present lighthouse
far into the lake, and added several hundred
acres to the domain Of the North Side.
9 Now, We come to the Buffalo lighthouse
Keeper, who had for ten years guided mariners
IN and out Of the harbor OF Buffalo, and seen SO
many departures :" for Fort Dearborn direct"
that, in 1888 be set out for that quarter him
the lamps and keep the redectors clean. So
came William Jones into Chicago And he had,
from his light house, too long watched shore
accretions, not to do Immediately the
very wise thing he did do On arriving
at Chicago, for he bought for s15O
tie very outside, shoremost lot Of fifty feet, On
the north side OF the river, and having done
this, he purchased small house on the south
east corner. Of Randolph and Dearborn streets,
and sent for the Jones family. He went into
trade in double front three-story wooden store,
Oh the south side Of South Water street, where
Jones d King opened stove and hardware
store. The other store, in the sa.no building,
was the fancy dry goods store of Walter Kimball
the Field l. Letters Of that day, and Walter
kimball is still among uH, able to pay for this
advertisement if we send him the bill.
In the third story was coied up the long form
Of John Wentworth, in 1886 Calhoun's successor,
the new editor OF the Democrat, making the ink
fly on his first Ramage press. and on issue days
stnding through the community, his own paper
carrier, for Editor Wentworth lad no idle SUPER
e.d1l Rn1a t1,1