Waukegan, Illinois

Waukegan plays quite a big role in most of Ray Bradbury's works, although you will never hear its name mentioned in any of his books. It has been given a pseudonym: Green Town, just as Bradbury renamed himself Douglas Spaulding. The possibilty of Green Town existing beyond Bradbury's words is just too delicious to keep in for any Bradbury fan.

Green Town is mentioned in passing several times in short stories, just for the reader to put a name to the place. But it is featured most prominently in Dandelion Wine, a book/ anthology Bradbury wrote concerning his childhood memories, and his town. Green Town is the centerpiece of the book: it is the quintessential American town, with elm trees, cobbled roads, cracked sidewalks spitting grass, a trolleycar, a haunted ravine... to some, it is nostalgic Main Street USA.

In Just This Side of Byzantium, the introduction to Dandelion Wine, Bradbury mentions a critic who observed that the author never mentioned the ugly coal trucks and disgusting harbors that surrounded his picturesque recount of Waukegan. Bradbury rallied, that to a young boy, such things are wonderful and mysterious, and ugliness is a trait only grown in adults. So Green Town appears in the book: beautiful and perfect, through the eyes of a boy. And although the present Waukegan does not come close, it has some pleasant surprises.

"Waukegan" is the Potawatomi Indian name for "fort" or "trading post", and it does indeed have origins in such names. Pere Marquette first explored the region in 1673, but the town was truly started when the Potawatomi Indians sold the land to the Federal Government in 1829. By that time, it was a small French trading post named "Little Fort", but soon after its population began to grow.

By 1841, Little Fort was the County Seat of Government due to its population. In fact, the town continued to skyrocket from a population of 150 to 750 in two years. The growth is attributed to the town's location on the lake, where produce was shipped from surrounding counties south to Chicago. The construction of the Illinois Parallel Railroad (later Chicago and Northwestern) furthered interest in the Little Fort manurfacturing industry.

In 1849, the people of Little Fort change its name to Waukegan, since their town was no longer "little", neither merely a "fort". Ten years later, Waukegan was incorporated as a city.

Here are a couple of photos I've managed to find on the web using a fine-toothed comb. It's not as easy as you might think!

Hold your cursor over a picture to get a tiny explanation.

In the next few years, I'd like to take a road trip up to Waukegan, get some better and more thorough pictures (so I don't have to copy these off all these poor peoples' websites). Until then, Waukegan-ites, send me your pictures!

sources:
Finn Home Page
Historical Waukegan @ Waukegan Web
Elm Research Institute- Help Restore the Elm Trees
Waukegan Harbor
Waukegan Public Library

Other Waukegan-related links....
City of Waukegan
Waukegan Public Library
Waukegan Port District
Waukegan Public School District

Back to Greentown