At 90, Peggy Montes joined the Oct. 27 groundbreaking for DuSable Park, a 3.44-acre site where the Chicago River meets Lake Michigan. The park was dedicated nearly four decades ago, but Tuesday’s ceremony moved the long-running community vision into its construction phase.
Montes was part of the original group that imagined the park in 1986, according to WTTW. She recalled meeting with Mayor Harold Washington, his brother Ramon Price and museum founder Margaret Burroughs to talk about how Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable’s story should be seen and heard in the city. Washington dedicated the park in 1987, and the Chicago Park District took control of the property the following year.
At Tuesday’s ceremony, Montes described the moment as a joyful one. The years between the dedication and construction included changes in plans, environmental work and the slow task of assembling a project that required public agencies, residents and private partners. For the people who had kept the idea alive, breaking ground offered a visible sign that planning had finally become work on the land.
The park is named for Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable, widely recognized as Chicago’s first permanent non-Indigenous settler. He was from Haiti, and his trading post helped shape the city’s early history. The Park District says the site’s interpretation will also recognize Potawatomi, Ottawa and Chippewa history and the trade routes that shaped the region. DuSable’s relationship with Kitihawa, an Indigenous woman he married, is part of that history as well. The project’s public art and signs are intended to tell more than one strand of the story of the riverfront.
The site itself had to be made safe before a park could be built. The land was created through landfill in the late 19th century. WTTW reported that a major delay came when radioactive thorium was found in soil, a legacy of an early 20th-century lamp factory that used the area as a dumping ground. The site required extensive environmental remediation and a new seawall. The Park District completed remediation in 2021 with support from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The park’s future was also tied to nearby development plans. The proposed Chicago Spire, a skyscraper planned for the land across DuSable Lake Shore Drive, stalled after the 2008 economic collapse. WTTW reported that Related Midwest acquired the adjacent property in 2014 and later pledged $10 million toward the park as part of its 400 Lake Shore Drive project. The city is also contributing $5 million in Open Space Impact Fees, according to the Park District.
The design includes an open lawn, pavilion, woodland, wet prairie, plazas, a boardwalk and an overlook. A planned extension of the Chicago Riverwalk, called Founders Way, will connect the park to the surrounding pedestrian route. Construction is expected to finish in summer 2028, according to the Park District. That timetable gives residents a clearer sense of when a space that has remained undeveloped for decades could become part of the everyday lakefront.
Art and history are planned as central parts of the park. The centerpiece will be a full-body sculpture of DuSable, with additional installations highlighting Indigenous voices, interpretive signs and a history timeline. The Mellon Foundation has committed $500,000 for a Native Voices public art installation, the Park District said. Landscape and gathering areas will sit alongside those elements, giving visitors places to pause as well as ways to learn about the people and routes that shaped the region.
The first vision for DuSable Park came from a small group, but the project now reflects years of collaboration among community advocates, park planners, elected officials, artists and funding partners. Park District Superintendent Carlos Ramirez-Rosa called the groundbreaking the result of many people’s persistence and partnership. Montes’ presence connected that longer effort to the construction crews now beginning work at the site.
The project is not finished; its opening remains about two years away. But the Oct. 27 ceremony marked a shift from a park that existed mostly as a promise to one with an active construction timeline. When DuSable Park opens, its trails, public art and gathering spaces are planned to bring together lakefront recreation and a public telling of Chicago’s early history.
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