This chevron-shaped community is one of Chicago's 16 lakefront neighborhoods near the southern rim of Lake Michigan 10 miles south of downtown.

Once a separate community, South Chicago began as a series of scattered Native American settlements before becoming a village.

First occupied by a chief named Askhum, considered 'lord' of the vast Callimink (Calumet) Valley and leader of the Pottawatomie people.

They and other Native peoples used South Chicago and the shallow Calumet River area as portages, for seasonal settlements, hunting and fishing thousands of years before White settlers arrived to the "New World".

With the entire Chicago Lakefront built on miles of landfill and slag there still remains a small stretch of semi-secluded beachfront just north of the Southworks Site.

This bit of lakefront, once a seasonal settlement for the Pottawatomie, was left alone due to an unmovable and deeply embedded bedrock of granite, which defied the development techniques of the time.

This beachfront and the massive outcrop of the Southworks table slag to the south and the water treatment plant to the north is a perfect demonstration of the vigorous advancement of the steel industry and 20th-century development.

It also demonstrates how South Chicago was not immediately affected by the housing ordinances restricting the use of lumber for home building after The Great Fire of 1871.

While South Chicago has a sizable African American population, existing ethnic groups continue to have strong community ties in the area.

Immaculate Conception, St. Michael's, two churches built in the 'Polish Cathedral style' and later Saint Bronislava have served South Chicago's Polish residents for over 80 years and now have significant sized Latino populations as well.

Several privately owned businesses such as clothing stores, furniture and retail, and beauty salons, can be found along Commercial Avenue.

[4] Wedged between East 89th Street, South Muskegon Avenue and the sycamore tree-lined South Chicago Avenue is the historic triangular Bessemer Park, named after English inventor Henry Bessemer, whose iron ore refining process revolutionized steel production.

Since the de-industrialization of South Chicago's once inaccessible shoreline from the late 1970s on, East 87th Street has been extended to Lake Michigan with the look and feel of a landscaped boulevard.

The former Southworks site brownfield, an area larger than the Loop, is a cleared and remediated table of slag and concrete, currently being transformed into Chicago's newest lakefront park with the feel of wide open prairie land.

The purchase of the property from notable world-class developers, has put South Chicago at the center of the city's, and the Nation's largest lakefront redevelopment effort in the 21st century.

The nearest CTA Red Line station is located 3 miles west, at 95th Street & Dan Ryan Expressway.

[9] A thirty-year development plan estimated to cost $4 billion was approved by the city in September 2010, for the former site of the huge steel mill, which operated along the neighborhood's shoreline from 1880 to 1992.