George Streeter
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"Cap" Streeter (George Wellington Streeter) (1837 - January 22, 1921) was born near the town of Flint, Michigan. On July 10, 1886, the former Mississippi River boat captain and circus owner ran his steamboat, the 35-ton Reutan, onto a sandbar near East Superior Street in Chicago, Illinois. Unable to move the vessel, which slowly silted into place, Streeter claimed it made up the Independent District of Lake Michigan. Slowly, landfill connected the Reutan to the city. In 1889, Streeter and his common-law wife, Maria, moved into a larger ship that had run aground in the District and named it the Castle.
That summer, industrialist Nathaniel K. Fairbank, who claimed rights to the area, arrived to inform Streeter he was an illegal squatter and would have to leave. Streeter chased Fairbank off with a shotgun. Shortly thereafter, Streeter also chased away the constables who had come to evict him. Further attempts to remove them were met with gunfire and scalding water. After one such raid resulted in his arrest for assault with a deadly weapon, Streeter was acquitted on the grounds that buckshot was not considered deadly.
Since the downtown clean-up after the Great Fire in 1871, Lake Michigan had been used as a dump by building contractors. Streeter invited such contractors to dump their waste on the sandbar where the Reutan sat, extending the size of his land considerably.
As the landmass grew, Streeter began to issue deeds to the land to others who saw themselves as "homesteaders" in the growing city of Chicago. City planners and founders saw otherwise.
Although Fairbank sued Streeter in 1890 and won, Streeter maintained his hold on the District, which was now home to prostitutes, transients and other "undesirables." During the World Columbian Exposition, Streeter refloated the Reutan and used it to ferry passengers between Streeterville and the Exposition grounds at Jackson Park.
From 1894 on, there were many attempts to forcibly remove Streeter from the District. In cases in which police were injured by axe and gunfire, Streeter and his men were invariably found not guilty due to acting in self-defense. Streeter's fight for what he considered his land continued until his death on January 24, 1921, although he and his second wife left Streeterville to move to East Chicago, Indiana in 1918. The Streeters' heirs continued to lay claim on the land until April 1928, when the courts ruled in favor of Chicago Title and Trust.
The site of Streeter's shanty is currently occupied by the John Hancock building, and the surrounding Chicago neighborhood is known as Streeterville.
