Union Stockyards

Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders…
Growing up on the northside, I never made it down to see the Stockyard Gate even though whenever I read about it I always wanted to visit.
Then the Chicago Tribune did a full page «flashback» on February 19, 2012
and I was going out to dinner with Elizabeth F. who lives in Bridgeport on the 26^th. This was a sign that I had to go visit the nearby Stockyard Gate.
She had never been to the gate but was willing to go. It’s one of the only remaining parts of the complex that was about a square mile at its height.
If you’re interested in Chicago history (or Carl Sandburg’s «Chicago») it“s somewhere that you have to visit.

Christopher and I stopped here today. I recall so vividly reading Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle when i was in high school. The stock yards were still running but in the zenith of its years. As a northsider, it was a world away to me, and i could never relate to it any more than I could when Carl Sandburg called Chicago «Hog butcher to the world». It was very interesting to see that little remnant of history. Driving around the industrial park which now has taken over the space one can begin to get a sense of how vast the place was. Even the Chicago Fire did not slow down the operation. Amazing!
Not to be missed is the Chicago Fire fighter’s Monument which shares the same little park area.

Five stars for being a Chicago historic landmark, and for being the place that almost made a vegetarian out of me for life.
Warning: my review will be graphic.
A previous reviewer described the stockyards as «part of Chicago’s…bloody legend». And bloody it was.
When I was a young kid, my grandmother used to go to a clinic that was very close to the Yards. She got free medical treatment there, paid for by my grandfather’s employer.
My mother would drive her there (from the Beverly neighborhood where she lived) in our big green Chrysler. I had to ride along, and I would dread that day. As I recall, the clinic appointments were monthly, on Tuesdays, which was killing day at the Yards.
The Yards was a huge operation, where millions of animals were killed. The big meatpacking plants of Armour, Swift, and others, were located nearby.
The stench of blood and death filled the area, and was so overpowering I could hardly stand it. I can remember that awful smell to this day.
I had to sit in the car, sometimes for a couple of hours, while my grandmother waited her turn at the clinic, and was treated (for varicose veins). I could never get used to the smell that permeated the air in this area.
When my mother was a Chicago school kid, would you believe her class went on a field trip to the Yards. This would have been in the 1930’s.
The kids witnessed pigs being butchered by men wearing hip boots, because the blood they were standing in was that deep, like a pond.
My mother was horrified.
I wonder if this is part of the reason she chose to devote much of her life to helping animals. She helped to found a humane society on Chicago’s far South Side, that now is quite large, and has saved the lives of countless critters.
The Stockyards is all gone now. I believe they shut down around 1970.
Gone, but never forgotten.

I grew up in the Back of the Yards. Learned to drive on the empty streets of the Union Stockyards. But all the prairies are gone, covered with buildings for the industrial park. The Stockyard Inn is gone, the International Amphitheatre gone, but the Stockyeard gate is still there. Check it out if you’re into Chicago history or a fan of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, a book that is just as pertinent now as it was when it was first written.

I also visited Sherman, the bull sitting on top of the grand arch introducing the Chicago Stockyards. Sherman stands for a prize-​fighting bull that was named after John Sherman, one of the founders of the Stockyards.
This historical site is out of the way but worth a visit if you are a history buff or interested in the culture and flavor of Chicago’s past. There is a some good reading on the informative plaque and the arch stands right next to the railroad crossing. You can just imagine the animals traveling on the tracks and the horrific suffering that they and the immigrants working at The Stockyards underwent before Upton Sinclair wrote his muckraking piece «The Jungle.»
The drive back will also take you through the South Side of Chicago to see the infamous neighborhood, and you can roll out around Hyde Park to check out the old grounds from the Chicago Exposition of 1895.

What put Chicago’s South Side on the map. Part of Chicago’s gritty, glorious, and bloody legend.
The old hotel stands abandoned on the corner of Halsted and Exchange. But you can imagine the trainloads of people that got off here everyday to heard cattle on the way to their bloody slaughter. The gate still still stands with the head of «Sherman» the cow looking out over the vacant street.
The industrial park currently occupying the site was founded in 1971, the same year the stockyards closed down forever.
Do yourself a favor and see with your own two eyes a part of Chicago’s history. Hey, at least the smell is gone.