Fabulous Chicago: A Great City's History and People

From prairie mud to the Century of Progress.

In 1837 a New York writer reported from the new frontier town that "interesting women are in demand here." Within a century Chicago had risen from prairie mud, burned to the ground, rebuilt itself in stone and steel, and produced a cast of characters unlike any other American city: Stephen Douglas and the Rail Splitter, Long John Wentworth and Big Bill Thompson, Mrs. Potter Palmer and Jane Addams, Marshall Field and Samuel Insull, Bathhouse John a...