Watch | Touring Chicago's Lakefront

After its people, Chicago’s lakefront is its greatest asset. But don’t take the lakefront for granted — it was by no means inevitable that Chicago’s crown jewel would end up so dazzling. This is the story of how the lakefront was envisioned, built, and defended. And how the struggle continues, under pressure from development and climate change.

Jean Baptiste Point DuSable is considered by many to be the first non-Indigenous settler and the founder of what would become Chicago. DuSable – along with his wife, Kitihawa, a Potawatami woman – built an impressive homestead at the convergence of the Chicago River and Lake Michigan, which back in those days was closer to present-day Michigan Avenue.

Mail order magnate A. Montgomery Ward was outraged that the lakefront near present-day Grant Park (built in part from the ash from the Great Chicago Fire) was rife with shantytowns and garbage. He filed lawsuits to clear the area and prevent further construction. His lawyer leaned on a phrase from an old map – that this section of the lakefront should remain "forever open, clear, and free."

The NASCAR Chicago Street Race began in 2023. The reception was mixed, but it’s not the first time Chicago has held an auto race on the lakefront. America’s first-ever auto race began in Jackson Park on Thanksgiving in 1895. It took more than 10 hours to complete the 50-mile course, and of the six cars that competed, two finished. The average speed? Just 5 miles per hour.

Northerly Island used to be home to Meigs Field, an airport on the lakefront for small planes. But under cover of darkness in 2003 and without informing state or federal officials, Mayor Richard M. Daley sent in a brigade of bulldozers to destroy the runway and close the airport. It was later transformed into a park which is closer to Daniel Burnham’s original vision than it was as an airport.

On July 27, 1919, Eugene Williams, a Black 17-year-old boy playing in Lake Michigan at a beach near 29th Street, floated across an invisible – and unofficial – color line segregating the swimming area. A white man hurled stones at Williams, who slipped under the water and drowned.

Just 600 feet off Chicago’s shoreline sits the wreckage of the Silver Spray, a steamship that got stuck on an ancient reef called Morgan Shoal and broke up in 1914. There were no passengers on board, and the crew all survived. The boiler and propeller are all that remain today. Morgan Shoal offers clues into prehistoric Chicago, which was a tropical sea 425 million years ago.

A man-made peninsula on Chicago’s South Side called Promontory Point is another example of Daniel Burnham’s Plan of Chicago in action. It has been offering a respite from busy city life since 1937. But for years it served another surprising purpose during the Cold War: It was the site of radar towers as the control center for a nearby Nike missile base – the last defense against a Soviet attack.

Chicago’s Jackson Park was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux – the men behind New York’s Central Park. They teamed up with Daniel Burnham to transform the park into the so-called "White City," a fairgoer’s fantasyland for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Today, the Museum of Science and Industry is the only fair pavilion left in Jackson Park.

The Broken Arrow Horseback Riding Club teaches equestrian skills to a new generation of predominantly Black children. Geoffrey Baer visits a rodeo at the South Shore Cultural Center – a former country club that used to exclude Black and Jewish people, even as the demographics of the South Shore neighborhood transformed over the decades.

In an industrial area on the Calumet River, the famous Calumet Fisheries smokehouse has been serving up fish for nearly 100 years. When it opened in 1928, commercial fishing was still going strong, and customers – often workers at the nearby steel factories – could enjoy fresh whitefish and trout. Though the steel mills and commercial fishing are gone, customers keep coming back.

In 2019, Tamima Itani noticed piping plovers building a nest along a volleyball court at Montrose Beach – the first plovers to nest in Chicago since 1948. She organized a group to protect the plovers, whom she named Monty and Rose. Their love story captured the heart of the city, and conservationists continue to monitor Monty and Rose’s descendants.

While out on a boat on Lake Michigan, Geoffrey Baer catches a lake trout, a species that was once a dominant predator fish in the Great Lakes. Commercial overfishing and invasive species decimated the population. But fishery management has led to a recovery of the species, as well as the introduction – and success – of non-native salmon.

After his steamship ran aground on a sandbar near present-day Superior Street, George Wellington Streeter staked an illegal claim on the vice district, which was overrun with gambling and prostitution. Streeter had an eventful tenure as the area’s resident con man, including forging President Grover Cleveland’s signature and selling property he didn’t actually own.

For many Chicagoans, Labor Day marks the end of the swim season. But the die-hard members of Open Water Chicago never say goodbye to the Lakefront: they swim in the lake year round. Meet four swimmers at sunrise to see how they prepare for swimming in 36 degree water, and what they see as the mental, physical, and social benefits of swimming in Lake Michigan, even in the depths of winter.