Greater Grand Crossing traces its name from an 1853 right-of-way feud between the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway and the Illinois Central Railroad that led to a frog war and a crash that killed 18 people as a result of intersecting tracks.

Bridgeport is the birthplace of five Chicago mayors, the home of the Chicago White Sox, and one of Chicago’s original ethnic working-class neighborhoods. But that’s only the beginning of Bridgeport’s story.

The South Shore area was still mainly swampland when a German farmer, used trails in elevated land to bring goods to Chicago. In the decades that followed, workers, started to settle in the area. The population then increased with the construction of a railroad station in 1881, incorporation into Chicago in 1889, and the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893.

The earliest settlers in Woodlawn were Dutch farmers, who came in the 1850s. They marketed their produce in Chicago through the railroad, which opened a station nearby. In 1889, the neigborhood became part of Chicago.

The neighborhood park was named after President George Washington in 1880. In the 1920s, the University of Chicago created the community area system of city subdivision creating the area of Washington Park.

Settlement of Kenwood began in the 1850s, with Chicago residents who were looking for relief from the increasingly crowded city. The earliest among these, Dr. John A. Kennicott, chose to reside near railroad tracks in what is now 48th Street. He called his place Kenwood, after the land of his forefathers in Scotland.

Grand Boulevard was originally forest and prairie, until the South Parks Commission lined a road with trees in 1874, calling it Grand Boulevard (it has since been renamed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive). The area was made part of Hyde Park township in 1861, and incorporated into Chicago in 1889.

Fuller Park was named for a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court from Chicago, was first settled after the Civil War.After the Great Chicago Fire, the City of Chicago adopted stronger building codes causing developers to move farther out attracting settlers as they built.

The Oakland neighborhood in Chicago was originally part of the settlement of Cleaverville, named after businessman Charles Cleaver. It was a community that grew out of a soap factory and was a company town that grew to include commissary, church, town hall as well as homes for local employees of the factory.

The Chicago community area known as Douglas, is named after Stephen A. Douglas, politician and land speculator known for the Lincoln-Douglas debates. The neighborhood was the site of Camp Douglas at the beginning of the Civil War, which served as a training facility for members of the Illinois regiment, and later as a prisoner camp for Confederate soldiers.

An eight-block area around the intersection of Cermak and Wentworth Avenues on Chicago’s Near South Side, Chinatown is one of Chicago’s most colorful neighborhoods, where Chinese heritage is a part of daily life.

Originally Native American homeland, the Near South Side neighborhood was first settled by blue collar settlement for workers of the Illinois & Michigan Canal – a vital project that helped connect the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River and helped the growth of the city.