Crossroads

As I continue wading through my initial Rogers Park research, some of the landmarks I've come to take for granted in 2018 - or simply as part of modern America - have a much more enduring story than I would've initially taken for granted.

The main shocker for me is the origin of Ridge Boulevard and Rogers Avenue.  Chicago, when it was rebuilt after the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, was built on a very regimented grid.  Every city block - meaning every marker that increases the street number by 100, not every street as hapless tourists and clueless locals come to find out - is 1/8 of a mile. There's a minor exception on the very near south side of the city, but it quickly corrects after mile two south of downtown.

So, from the city center to the farthest major street on the north side of the city - Howard, the generally accepted northern boundary of the city and a major street in Rogers Park - the distance is exactly 9.5 miles.  The street number for Howard is 7600, which is, not coincidentally, 9.5 times the eight blocks required to form a mile in Chicago.  Devon, the generally accepted southern boundary of Rogers Park has a street address of 6400 and is - you guessed it - eight miles north of the city center.

Ridge and Rogers don't follow this logic.  Indeed, there are a few "diagonal" streets - mostly on the North side - that buck the city grid layout.  Discovering their quirks may be a good side blog post, but the reasons for Ridge and Rogers are known (at least according to Wikipedia) - they're old Pottawatami Indian trails.  This makes sense - Ridge heads in a predominantly north-south direction, while Rogers heads predominantly east-west, so these were likely the trails the Indians used to head in those respective directions. 

Still, it's amazing to me that modern infrastructure in America (the land that often prides itself on the "newness" of its traditions) is based off markers that have been around for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.  This reminds me of a story (I'm not sure if it's apocryphal) relating the space shuttle to a horse's ass.  If it's true, it's a telling reminder that for as much credit humans give ourselves about our ingenuity, we're still slaves to the familiar.