Members,
The July UASC meeting is this Wednesday, July 30th. UASC meetings are held at the Chicago Maritime Museum located at 1200 West 35th Street, Suite OE5010, Chicago, IL 60609. Free parking is available adjacent to the facility. Use the entrance next to the loading dock on the north side of the building (same side you will park on). The door is at ground level and the museum is on the lower level down the stairway.
The White Sox are out of town this week so there won't be any game related traffic problems getting to the meeting.
As I'm not available to attend the meeting this month, Beth Plotner will be managing the meeting in my absence.
Our guest speaker will be Gary Mechanic, the founder of and a veteran storyteller. A small unremarkable ditch on the west side of Harlem just north of the Stevenson Expressway is protected by National Historic Site status in Portage Woods Forest Preserve. The short and shallow ditch is the reason a great city grew near it, and is a key link in Chicago's largely unknown birth story. Chicago owes its very existence to the location of the Chicago Portage.
Gary will present an overview of Chicago's only National Historic Site along with a short documentary on the site's significance and a brief tour of the archaeological finds on the site.
Please invite your friends to join us for this free presentation.