It was constructed by U.S. troops under Captain John Whistler and named in honor of Henry Dearborn, then United States Secretary of War.

The site of the fort is now a Chicago Landmark, located in the Michigan–Wacker Historic District, at the southern end of the DuSable Michigan Avenue Bridge.

[3] Archaeologists, however, have discovered numerous historic Indian village sites dating to that time elsewhere in the Chicago region.

[4] In 1682, René Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle had claimed a large territory (including the Chicago area), for France.

Great Britain later ceded the area to the United States (at the end of the American Revolutionary War), although the Northwest Territory remained under de facto British control until about 1796.

The first non-native to re-settle in the area may have been a trader named Guillory, who might have had a trading-post near Wolf Point on the Chicago River around 1778.

The survey completed, on July 14, 1803, a company of troops set out to make the overland journey from Detroit to Chicago.

[17] The Tracy was anchored about half a mile offshore, unable to enter the Chicago River due to a sandbar at its mouth.

A fur trader, John Kinzie, who bought the old Du Sable property, arrived in Chicago in 1804, and rapidly became the civilian leader of the small settlement that grew around the fort.

Captain Heald oversaw the evacuation, but on August 15, the evacuees were ambushed along the trail by about 500 Potawatomi Indians in the Battle of Fort Dearborn.

This fort consisted of a double wall of wooden palisades, officer and enlisted barracks, a garden, and other buildings.

The southern perimeter of Fort Dearborn was located at what is now the intersection of Wacker Drive and Michigan Avenue in the Loop community area of Chicago along the Magnificent Mile.

Part of the fort outline is marked by plaques, and a line embedded in the sidewalk and road near the Michigan Avenue Bridge and Wacker Drive.