Lost Communities of Chicago - Shanty Town and the District of Lake Michigan. (aka The Sands; Streeterville)

Captain George Wellington Streeter

George Wellington Streeter was born in Flint, Michigan, in 1837. Before the Civil War, he wandered the Great Lakes region, working at various times as a logger and trapper, an ice cutter on Saginaw Bay, a deckhand on Canada's Georgian Bay, and a miner. 

He married his first wife, Minnie, and then traveled west in a covered wagon, returning to Michigan on the eve of the Civil War. He joined the Union Army as a private and served in the Tennessee theater.

After the war, he became a showman, lumberjack, and steamship operator. After his wife left him (she ran off with a vaudeville troupe), he came to Chicago in the mid-1880s and married again. 

He and his new wife, Maria, decided to become gun runners in Honduras. Streeter bought a steamship and named it "Reutan." 

Before piloting it down to Central America, Streeter took a test cruise in Lake Michigan in 1886 during a gale. The ship ran aground about 450 feet from the Chicago shore.

The Steamship "Reutan" docked on the Chicago River.

In the days that followed, Streeter surveyed the situation and decided to leave his boat where it was. At the time, Chicago was amidst a building boom after the great Chicago fire of 1871. Streeter found excavation contractors who were eager to pay a fee for the right to dump fill on the beach near his boat. 

He eventually amassed 186 acres of newly created land. Consulting an 1821 government survey, Streeter determined that his man-made land lay beyond the boundaries of both Chicago and Illinois and therefore claimed that he was homesteading the land as a Civil War veteran.

Unfortunately, prominent Chicagoans such as Potter Palmer and N.K. Fairbank owned the land adjacent to Streeter's land accretions. These men claimed that Streeter was a squatter and had no legal rights to the land. Streeter argued differently, declaring, "When I come here ther warn't a particle of land for me to squat on!"

Sensing that his enemies would try to oust him, Streeter replaced his ship with a homemade two-story tar-paper "castle." The first floor was his war room; the second floor was his residence.

Captain Streeter's Converted Boat Fortress/Home

When private detectives and thugs attempted to serve allegedly specious warrants on Streeter, he and his wife responded with sawed-off muskets filled with birdshot. On one occasion, Streeter's wife drove off three deputies by dousing them with boiling water.

Click for a full-size map.

Several times, assailants were killed during their attempts to storm what Streeter called his "District of Lake Michigan." But the city found it challenging to keep Streeter in jail, and one time he was acquitted of self-defense. 

Another time he proved that the birdshot in his rifle could not possibly have killed the policeman found with a piece of lead in his heart. When he was arrested for refusing "to disperse," he successfully argued in court that he could not disperse as he was only one person. 

But in March 1902, John Kirk, an imported Western gunman, was killed in Streeter's district. Streeter was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison, and Streeter claimed he was framed; the governor of Illinois agreed and pardoned him nine months later. But while Streeter was in prison, his wife died.

Streeter resumed control over his domain. To finance his side of the battle, Streeter sold lots to upward of 200 prospective homeowners, as well as refreshments, alcoholic beverages, and snacks to real estate shoppers and the just plain curious. 

Unable to oust him by force, his foes turned to the courts. However, the law of riparian rights was murky, and Streeter's lawyers - paid with deeds of land - proved to be able adversaries. 

Streeter offered various theories about why the land belonged to him in real life. Sometimes he claimed it by squatters' rights, and other times he'd bought a deed from a mysterious John Scott "someplace in Michigan."

The longest-running explanation was a purported land grant from President Grover Cleveland that Streeter waved in front of judges for 25 years — until, that is, a handwriting expert took the witness stand in a 1918 trial and put a chemical test to the document's signatures, as the Tribune reported. "Lo and behold, the signature of Cleveland faded away, and there arose in its place the quaint and sturdy signature of President Martin Van Buren!" Streeter's name vanished by a similar process, revealing the actual grantee was Robert Kinzie, a pioneer Chicagoan. The judge ruled that the document "was and is now a clumsy forgery," adding that weather bureau records showed no evidence of a storm the night Streeter claimed to have been shipwrecked.

But finally, shortly after his arrest in 1918 for selling liquor without a license and assault on a police officer, agents of Chicago Title and Trust Company, armed with warrants, put the torch to Streeter's castle. 

By now, Streeter had married a third time, and his wife, Emma "Ma" Streeter, charged the group with a meat cleaver, but to no avail, and the couple retreated to a nearby boat to wanly continue the fight. He never returned, and Streeter spent the next few years operating a floating hot dog stand in East Chicago. The old rogue died on January 24, 1921, at age 84.

Many dignitaries, including William Hale Thompson, the mayor of Chicago, attended his funeral. His wife continued to wage war both inside the courtroom and on the shores of Lake Michigan. In 1925 the federal district court in Chicago ruled that because Streeter never divorced Minnie, his first wife, "Ma" Streeter, was not legally married and thus ineligible to file claims for Streeter's property. The last suit brought by alleged heirs was dismissed in 1940, thus finally ending a half-century of colorful warfare and litigation concerning the sovereignty of the District of Lake Michigan - to this day still called Streeterville, in honor of its founder. 

Shows Expanding Chicago Shoreline by Year. 

The land that Streeter so ardently fought for is now the most expensive part of Chicago. It is on the Near North Side of the city, bounded by Oak Street on the north, Michigan Avenue on the West, Grand Avenue to the south, and Lake Michigan on the east.

Today this area is a named neighborhood called Streeterville. The property continues to be valuable, and the John Hancock Center now towers where the Reutan fortress used to be.

A statue of "Cap" stands at Grand Avenue
and McClurg Court, Chicago, Illinois.

Read Captain Streeter, Pioneer. Published in 1914.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D. 

Downtown Chicago's "Cow Path" from 1844 is still Protected by Law.

Mz. Udders

To get the history of how this "Cow Path" came to be, one must go back to 1833, when Chicago was incorporated as a town on August 12, with a population of about 350 inhabitants. 

After working as a carpenter on the Erie Canal, Willard Jones, an early settler who migrated from New York, decided to make this town his home. For $200 ($8,225 in 2024), Willard purchased several plots of land in today's Chicago Loop business district.

The area of Clark Street on the east, LaSalle Street on the west, Monroe Street on the south, and Washington Street on the north in Chicago equals 33 acres.

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The average cost for Willard Jones property today (2025) would cost $10.3 Million per acre, or $340 Million for 33 acres of land without any improvements.

Willard built a farmhouse and some outbuildings in the 1830s and successfully worked the land while building a dairy barn. The terrain remained unchanged for many years.

Chicago was incorporated as a city on March 4, 1837. As the population started to grow and early industry emerged, real estate began to gain in value as early developers looked for ways to utilize land in ways more profitable than agriculture. In response to this phenomenon, Jones started selling off parcels of his land in 1844 in the surrounding vicinity of what today encompasses Clark Street on the east, LaSalle Street on the west, Monroe Street on the south, and Washington Street on the north. Some of the original commercial properties in downtown Chicago were eventually erected on this land, which ultimately planted the seeds for the birth of the Loop business district.

Jones sold the southern portion of his property to Royal Barnes in 1844, and Jones continued to operate a smaller version of his farm near the present-day intersection of Clark and Monroe. Jones sold the northern half of his original property to Abner Henderson two years after the Barnes sale. Written into the property deed was a provision that Jones would have access to Monroe Street via a 10-foot wide corridor west of the Barnes land to take his cattle from farm to pasture, just to the south, where the Board of Trade now stands. 

No construction was permitted which would obstruct this cow path in any way. As downtown Chicago began to develop over the upcoming decades, the easement was legally binding by the Illinois Supreme Court in 1925.

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The cow path is a public easement which is a legal right that allows the public to use a property for a specific purpose. Once a public easement is created, it cannot be abandoned or taken away. Therefore, the cow path is still a public easement, and anyone is legally entitled to use it to herd cows, even if it passes through private property.

In 1927, the owners of the old Barnes property were ready to erect a 22-story office building at Monroe and Clark. By then, they'd acquired title to the 10-foot corridor. However, the owners of the Henderson plot to the north still had that right-of-way guarantee and refused to surrender it. The courts ruled that work could proceed on the Barnes property only if the access corridor was retained. So, architect Frank Chase redrew his plans. Ultimately, the 100 West Monroe Building was constructed with an 18-foot-high tunnel through its western edge, big enough for any farm animals or hay wagons passing through the Loop.

November 26, 1932 - This photo shows the cow named Northwood Susan Sixth being milked on her arrival at the end of the historic cow path, which can be seen behind her.

To celebrate this unique attribute, Mayor Edward Kelly affixed a bronze plaque on this portion of the building proclaiming the tunnel was "reserved forever as a cow path" in 1937. 

The Plaque Reads:

Historic Cow Path: This areaway 10 x 177 x 18 feet is reserved forever as a cow path by the terms of the deed of Willard Jones in 1844 when he sold portions of the surrounding property. Erected by Chicago’s Charter Jubilee and Authenticated by the Chicago Historical Society, 1937.

While the plaque is long gone and unaccounted for, this unique bit of Chicago history still exists today. However, in 1969, when the Two First National Plaza Building was erected at 20 South Clark, it blocked off the northern end of the cow path.

According to a 1979 Tribune article, both Chicago Title & Trust and the Chicago Historical Society declared that "the action was legal, and there doesn't seem to have been any court challenges to it."

When the Hyatt Corporation began converting the 100 West Monroe building into a hotel, Chicago historians feared the cow path would be obliterated. Happily, hotel management has a sense of history preserving it. Hyatt also has a sense of whimsy; one of the hotel's conference rooms is named WILLARD JONES. 

You can still use the cow path tunnel as a shortcut to LaSalle Street.

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Chicago held a "Cows on Parade" public art project  in 1999, following Zurich, Switzerland which held the first  public "Cows on Parade" exhibit in 1998.  Over 300 life-size fiberglass cows were decorated by local artists and placed throughout the city. The cows were on display for several months and then auctioned off, with the proceeds benefiting local charities. The project was a huge success, attracting millions of visitors and raising over $3 million for charity.

The project has been held in over 80 cities worldwide since Chicago began this art form  and fund raising trend in 1999. 

Some of the other U.S. cities were: New York City, New York (2000), Stamford, Connecticut (2000), Kansas City, Missouri (2001), Houston, Texas (2001), Portland, Oregon (2002), Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (2004), Denver, Colorado (2006), and San Diego, California (2009). 

Chicago's idea caught on Internationally; Manchester, England, UK (2004), Edinburgh, Scotland (2006), Toulouse, France (2012), Perth, Western Australia (2014), Mississauga, Ontario, Canada (2021), and Toronto, Ontario, Canada (2022)

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.