Nature Bulletin No. 143   February 21, 1948
Forest Preserve District of Cook County
William N. Erickson, President
Roberts Mann, Supt. of Conservation

****:GURDON S. HUBBARD. 1802 - 1886

In the spring of 1818 a gangling, penniless, 16-year-old Vermont boy 
named Gurdon S. Hubbard got a job as a trading post clerk for the 
American Fur Company and came to Chicago. Leaving Montreal, he 
spent months coming by boat with a party of fur traders up the St. 
Lawrence River and through the Great Lakes. Here i8 how he describes 
the last day of that trip, having camped at the mouth of the Calumet 
River.

"We started at dawn. The morning wag calm and bright, and we, in our 
holiday attire, with flag flying, completed the last twelve miles of our 
lake voyage. Arriving at Douglas Grove, where the prairie could be 
seen through the oak woods, I landed, and climbed a tree, gazed in 
admiration on the first prairie I had ever seen. The waving green, 
intermingling with a rich profusion of wild flowers, was the most 
beautiful sight I had ever gazed upon. In the distance the grove of Blue 
Island loomed up, beyond it the timber on the DesPlaines River, while 
to give animation to the scene, a herd of wild deer appeared, and a pair 
of red foxes emerged from the grass within gunshot of me.

"Looking north, I saw the whitewashed buildings of Fort Dearborn 
sparkling in the sunshine, our boats with flags flying, and oars keeping 
time to the cheering boat song. I was spell-bound and amazed at the 
beautiful scene before me. I took the trail leading to the fort, and, on my 
arrival, found our party camped on the north side of the river, near what 
is now State Street. A soldier ferried me across the river in a canoe, and 
thus I made my first entry into Chicago, October 1, 1818. "

Yet that boy, perhaps more than any other person, by his own efforts, 
vision and enterprise, helped make Chicago the roaring metropolis we 
know today. Before he died here, in 1886, he saw the Indian driven out 
by white settlers; the wilderness change into fertile farms; and a lonely 
fur trading post become the crossroads of America.

You can't always tell what will happen when a boy climbs a tree to get a 
good look at things.