Evanston

Today Evanston is an attractive, prosperous city which over 73,000 people call home. Though it is the closest North suburb ofChicago, Evanston has resisted becoming merely a ‘bedroom’ community, maintaining an independent character marked by a bustling business center, a renowned university and a high-quality public education system. This independence is reflected in Evanston’s 150-year history: in the strength and imagination of the people who not only built the city, but also helped shape the course of America.

The region we know today as the North Shore was once home to the Potawatami Indians. Villages were situated along the forested shores of Lake Michigan, where abundant game and easy access to the lake supported a lifestyle of hunting and fur-trading. Traces of these Native American villages have been found in Evanston on the site of present-day Saint Francis Hospital and at Dempster Street by the lake.

The first known European visitors were French voyageurs, who referred to the area as ‘Grosse Pointe,’ after the large point of land now marked by the Grosse Point Lighthouse. In 1674, French explorer and missionary Jacques Marquette wrote of the North Shore area: “the land bordering the lake is of no value…” Little did Marquette know that this lakeshore area would later become prime real estate! The French explored the shoreline, but did not attempt colonization. After the War of 1812, the United States acquired the French lands around Lake Michigan, and Grosse Pointe became Grosse Pointe Territory.

After living here for centuries, the Potawatami were forced to cede all their lands to the U.S. in a series of five treaties dating from 1795 to 1833. The government then parceled out plots of land to pioneer settlers who were moving from the East. The first European-American settler of Grosse Pointe was Major Edward H. Mulford, a jewelry dealer from New York. In 1836, Mulford bought 160 acres and improved the land with the Ten-Mile House, a house and tavern which held the territory’s first post office and the first court of Cook County.

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Evanston Library