page_title: History of Chicago
section_title: 19th century city
hierarchical_section_title: History of Chicago / 19th century city
caption_attribution_description: English: James Thompson's plat of Chicago, made on August 4, 1830. Made to the order of the Illinois and Michigan Canal Commissioners, this marked the first formal recognition of a place named "Chicago". According to the Chicago History Museum, this is Thompson's original plat; the statement of the Canal Commissioners indicates that they based land sales on it.
context_page_description: Chicago has played a central role in American economic, cultural and political history. Since the 1850s Chicago has been one of the dominant metropolises in the Midwestern United States, and has been the largest city in the Midwest since the 1880 census. The area's recorded history begins with the arrival of French explorers, missionaries and fur traders in the late 17th century and their interaction with the local Pottawatomie Native Americans. Jean Baptiste Point du Sable was the first permanent non-indigenous settler in the area, having a house at the mouth of the Chicago River in the late 18th century. There were small settlements and a U.S. Army fort, but the soldiers and settlers were all driven off in 1812. The modern city was incorporated in 1837 by Northern businessmen and grew rapidly from real estate speculation and the realization that it had a commanding position in the emerging inland transportation network, based on lake traffic and railroads, controlling access from the Great Lakes into the Mississippi River basin.
context_section_description: In 1829, the Illinois legislature appointed commissioners to locate a canal and lay out the surrounding town.  The commissioners employed James Thompson to survey and plat the town of Chicago, which at the time had a population of less than 100.  Historians regard the August 4, 1830 filing of the plat as the official recognition of a location known as Chicago.
  Yankee entrepreneurs saw the potential of Chicago as a transportation hub in the 1830s and engaged in land speculation to obtain the choicest lots. On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago was incorporated with a population of 350. On July 12, 1834, the Illinois from Sackets Harbor, New York was the first commercial schooner to enter the harbor, a sign of the Great Lakes trade that would benefit both Chicago and New York state. Chicago was granted a city charter by the State of Illinois on March 4, 1837; it was part of the larger Cook County. By 1840 the boom town had a population of over 4,000.
  After 1830, the rich farmlands of northern Illinois attracted Yankee settlers. Yankee real estate operators created a city overnight in the 1830s. To open the surrounding farmlands to trade, the Cook County commissioners built roads south and west; the latter crossed the "dismal Nine-mile Swamp," the Des Plaines River, and went southwest to Walker's Grove, now the Village of Plainfield. The roads enabled hundreds of wagons per day of farm produce to arrive, so the entrepreneurs built grain elevators and docks to load ships bound for points east through the Great Lakes. Produce was shipped through the Erie Canal and down the Hudson River to New York City; the growth of the Midwest farms expanded New York City as a port.
  In 1837 Chicago held its first mayoral election, electing William B. Ogden as its inaugural mayor.
caption: Thompson's plat, the first official map of what would become the City of Chicago.
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