Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West

I read this book in 1996, and ordered it again to gift a friend who just moved to Chicago. The author was a plenary speaker at an historic preservation conference I attended. Everyone there thought his presentation and the subject matter with incredible. I’ve saved one copy to read again.

This is an academic book which describes in great detail the rise of Chicago from a fur trading post to a major metropolis capable of putting on a World’s Fair of great beauty, attracting visitors from around the world. The author, William Cronon, has a thorough knowledge of his subject and the footnotes and bibliography collect an exhaustive list of sources for every possible angle on the development of Chicago in the nineteenth century.His thesis that the history of a city and its surrounding countryside cannot be told separately leads him to an exploration of many of the important industries which shaped the environment of the midwest during the nineteenth century. There’s an excellent account of the development of the grain trade and its far-reaching effects as farmers split up the land into plots on which to grow their crops and the the skyline of Chicago was reshaped with the construction of numerous grain elevators to store and distribute the crops from the west both locally and in eastern markets via the railroad. Another chapter describes the lumber industry which was almost a city within the city and inspired loggers in Wisconsin and Michigan to reduce numerous pine forests to vast cutover districts.Sections on the meat packing industry and the mail order catalog businesses of Montgomery Ward and Sears are enriched with many details that demonstrate both the effect the city had on its more sparsely populated hinterland and the way in which the ecology of the region drove changes in the area and was changed by the development of the concentrated settlement of people. Cronon enlivens what can at times be dry historical material with stories about the inventions and the technology that accelerated change in the American west like the the refrigerated railroad car, barbed wire, and the balloon frame house.Another focus of the book is the capital flows that promoted and supported the development of Chicago and the west. From real estate speculation in the 1830s to the coming of the railroads a few decades later, many of the changes to Chicago were financed by investors in the east. Cronon also did extensive research into the credit and debt of bankrupts in the 1870s to illustrate the extent of the commercial connections that played such an important role in the growth of Chicago.This is an important, fascinating history of Chicago and the west, of its businesses and industries, its ecologies and environments. Cronon has succeeded in making the history of Chicago during the nineteenth century both historically interesting and fascinating on a more personal level by describing the rise and decline of industries and corporations as well as the stories of individuals including entrepreneurs, farmers, and workers who both caused and reacted to, sometimes unsuccessfully, the changes brought on by the growth of Chicago. It’s detailed, engrossing, and full of interesting, provocative ideas.

This is a wonderful book about how Chicago came to be Chicago -- and how the whole landscape of the Midwest was changed. It tells the story of the canal, the railroads, the lumber industry, the meat-packing industry, the McCormick reaper, grain elevators, futures trading, the world's fair, and much more. Although I thought it started slowly, I was surprised how much I enjoyed the middle and the end. Highly recommended!

A first rate read about the settlement of the US heartland with Chicago at the center of the story. A really good read; I liked it a lot.

The city of Chicago inhabits a unique location straddling several natural divides: between the watersheds of Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River; between vast grasslands on the Great Plains and dense woodlands around the Great Lakes. Appropriately, William Cronon’s Nature’s Metropolis tells the story of the city’s remarkable nineteenth-century rise as one of connections, both geographical and thematic: between east and west, water and rail, ecology and economy. But like the low, swampy ridge through which enterprising Chicagoans constructed the Illinois and Michigan Canal in the 1830s and 40s, Cronon’s divisions are not so neat and tidy.Cronon begins with a delicate refutation of Frederick Jackson Turner’s Frontier Thesis, arguing that cities “grew in tandem with the countryside” (p. 47). Rather than developing in isolation as the product of discreet urban economic forces, Chicago rose to power only as its rural surroundings became a hinterland of natural and agricultural resource production. And as more efficient and reliable transportation networks sprung up to support trade between, for example, cattle ranchers in Kansas or lumbermen in Michigan and the concentration of fiscal and manufacturing capital in Chicago, ties strengthened further, leading some boosters and twentieth-century urban theorists to espouse a certain “gravitational” (p. 38) argument for the city’s success.Throughout Nature’s Metropolis—especially in the three parallel chapters on grain, lumber, and meat production—Cronon proves that economic and environmental histories can (and should) be reconciled. Furthermore, Cronon writes with the clarity and color that makes this a truly engaging book. Indeed, his explanation of futures markets is as lucid as that of seasonal grain production—which says a lot, considering the disdain with which environmental historians often regard the mechanisms of capitalism. Though the last three chapters can feel a bit tedious and redundant—especially considering the book’s length—Nature’s Metropolis is a remarkable achievement and a benchmark for urban environmental history.

It is not possible to praise this book too much. It leaves the reader enriched in so many areas. As the title implies, it is a deep history of Chicago during the 19th century but it is also a history of how Chicago interacted with its hinterland, an area that encompassed much of the Western USA. Unlike many other histories of cities, it's emphasis is on the influence had on it's countryside and the influence of it's countryside on Chicago. The book is a must read for anyone interested in developing a deeper understanding of American history in the 19th century, the development of the Western USA, and evolution of the railroad networks, and the history of technology and business.The book is very detailed without becoming mired down in boring details. Instead, the level of detail ensures that the reader is left with a deep understanding of each topic discussed in the book. The book begins with the early history of Chicago and the vision of early boosters of the city from the 1840s. It then covers the transportation networks that evolved to serve Chicago, particularly the railroads and the water transport on the Great Lakes.The book then goes into the role that Chicago played in the market for wheat. Innovations that led to Chicago's success with this commodity included the use of Grain Elevators, the Chicago Board of Trade, standardization of wheat qualities, and futures contracts. The book then moves on to discuss the lumber industry and explains the cash flow challenges of this industry as a consequence of the need to transport the logs via rivers at a time when they had enough water in them and were not frozen over. The lumber industry eventually fell as a victim to it's own success when the countryside began to run out of trees. The book then shifts to a discussion of the meat packing industry and the many innovations used in Chicago. These included the use of refrigerator rail cars, kept cold using blocks of ice collected from frozen lakes in the winter, in order to transport beef and not the entire cow.The book then continues with a mapping of capital and cash flows between Chicago and it's hinterland. This includes a deep dive into the challenges of wholesale and retail merchants in the hinterland. It also explains how their situation evolved with the increase in the rail network. Finally, this section discusses the implications of the catalog sales of Montgomery Wards and Sears.The final section of the book looks at the Chicago Fair of 1893. In addition to discussing the fair, the section talks about the general attitude of rural society towards Chicago and how Chicago became a magnet that attracted young rural kids to the big city. There is also a discussion of vice in Chicago. Finally, the Epilogue of the book discusses how the hinterland evolved into an area that attracted tourists from Chicago.

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I was assigned this book for a university course on the history of capitalism. Out of the four books assigned, this one was the longest, (400+ pages) yet, somehow, the easiest to read.Cronon studies the formation of the city of Chicago and its hinterlands by tracking the flow of commodities and capital between them. By all accounts, this should be a tedious and boring read. However, Cronon is an amazing author. He writes in a way that captures the reader's attention and holds it all the way through. If you are assigned this book, don't dread it, but give yourself time to read it carefully. It's not an easy journey, but it is an interesting one.

A superb account of the economic rise of Chicago and its impact on the Midwest

This book was recommended to me by a friend who is studying for a doctorate in environmental history under William Cronon. I read the book ahead of my first ever trip to Chicago (and other parts of the American Mid-West) and the book certainly served as a good historical introduction to the area, especially the astonishingly fast growth of Chicago: the relationship between that metropolis and its natural hinterland is vividly described. While the book is of interest to a general reader such as myself, it will certainly be of more interest to students and academics in the field of Environmental History.