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Grade 5 Social Studies · World 2: Bigger, Better, Faster · Level 14
Chicago Grows
Explain Chicago's growth through transportation, and locate it.
Warm-up, learn, try it together, practice, then a quick check. About 15 minutes.
What children learn in Level 14
- Remember the cattle trails? Many of those trains rolled on to Chicago, on Lake Michigan.
- Railroads from every direction met in Chicago. This simple map shows a few. Cattle and wheat came in from the west, and meat and flour went out to the east.
- Giant meatpacking plants and grain stations grew up, and they needed thousands of workers.
- Look at the census. In 1860, about 109,000 people lived in Chicago. By 1900, about 1.7 million did. A great fire burned much of the city in 1871, and people rebuilt it.
- Population, transportation, and resources explain a city. Ask those three questions about any place on a map.
Georgia Standards of Excellence in Social Studies:
- SS5G2.b — Locate primary agricultural and industrial locations since the turn of the 20th century and explain how factors such as population, transportation, and resources have influenced these areas (e.g., Chicago's rapid growth at the turn of the century).
- SS5G1.a — Locate important man-made places; include the Chisholm Trail; Pittsburgh, PA; Kitty Hawk, NC; Pearl Harbor, HI; Montgomery, AL.; and Chicago, IL.