RESOLUTION
WHEREAS, The City of Chicago will celebrate the 175th Anniversary of its incorporation as a City, known officially as the dodransbicentennial - Greek for three-quarters of two hundred years; and
WHEREAS, The Chicago City Council has been made aware of this occasion by Alderman Edward M. Burke of the 14th Ward; and
WHEREAS, Chicago was first incorporated as a town in 1833; and
WHERREAS, Chicago's earliest life was characterized as a trading post for trappers and fur merchants before official incorporation, and
WHEREAS, Chicago was first populated by the Potawatomi Nation of native peoples who first characterized the landscape as "Chi-caw-goo," onion smell, from the fields of wild onion growing in abundance, and
WHEREAS, In 1803, the infant Republic of the United States under the direction of Secretary of War John Dearborn, commissioned a protective stockade to be constructed at the far western reaches of the nation that became known as Fort Dearborn. Captain John Whistler, a native-born Irishman, supervised the project and became the Fort's first commander. During the Ward of 1812, the Fort would be burnt and the residents slaughtered by the Potawatomi in league with the British. It was once again rebuilt. Much of Fort Dearborn was demolished in 1857; and
WHEREAS, In 1837 Chicago was incorporated as a City and elected its first mayor, William Butler Ogden; and
WHEREAS, The 1838 conjoining of the waterways of Chicago were the young city's number one priority with a canal dug that would effectively connect Lake Michigan to the Illinois River some 90 miles away; and
WHEREAS, The canal project was responsible for a large influx of Irish immigrants who worked in the strenuous labor of digging the 90-mile trench, with many Irish settling at the point of the canal's completion in Chicago - the neighborhood of Bridgeport; and
WHEREAS, The Illinois and Michigan Canal, as it was known, became Chicago's most stunning engineering project, and permitted agricultural p...
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