In the early days of Evergreen Park, drivers didn`t have to worry about threading their way through a string of stoplights and six lanes of traffic along 95th Street.
There were traffic jams around the turn of the century, but the back-ups then were due to a horse and wagon mired in the muck of the narrow dirt thoroughfare after a spring thaw or rainy day. There were even reports of quicksand lurking along 99th Street.
The mud, wooden sidewalks and deep drainage ditches along 95th Street fascinated ``the Park`s`` early residents. Some recall fishing in the ditches for bullheads and crabs, or ice skating for miles. Others remember daring each other to jump across the water and floating on logs from one bridge to another.
Barney Huske, 78, remembers those ditches as his first naval adventure.
``They were really like little canals, sometimes 10 feet deep and 8 feet wide,`` says the lifelong resident.
``One day the wind blew down a big sign, about 12 feet high and 8 feet wide,`` he says. ``I pounded that sheet of tin out flat and turned up the sides to make a boat. Then I melted tar and put it along the (seams) to seal it, and I went all over in that boat.``
By the late 1920s, 95th Street and Kedzie Avenue were paved and well established as the heart of Evergreen Park, incorporated in 1893.
The center of town, however, originally was supposed to be the diamond-shaped park of pine trees at 97th Street and Homan Avenue, according to the plans of developers in the early 1870s. From there, residential streets radiated outward like the spokes of a wagon wheel to resemble the Arch of Triumph area of Paris.
The cluster of stately evergreen trees at the hub lent the new community its name. Later, the park was renamed after Mayor Henry Klein, who died in office soon after the village`s 75th anniversary in 1968.
Progress chugged into town in 1873 when the Chicago, Danville & Vincennes Railroad extended a line from the north. The railway soon merged with the Grand Trunk Railroad, and depots were built at 95th Street and 99th Street to carry area farmers` crops to market.
The first school was built in 1875 at 95th Street and Sawyer Avenue. Some students at the four-room, two-story brick building soon also attended the town`s first Sunday school in a frame building at 94th Street and Homan Avenue. The Sunday school venture in 1892 led to formation of the first local congregation, the First Methodist Church of Evergreen Park.
The financial panic of the 1890s saw several neighboring communities petition to be annexed by the City of Chicago. But Evergreen Park, population 500, decided to go it alone.
A referendum proposal to incorporate as a village was approved by a vote of 40-11 on Dec. 20, 1893. John M. Foley, a real estate and insurance agent, was elected the first village president, along with six village board members and a clerk. A police magistrate was added to the payroll in 1894.
Part of the reason for the town`s plucky independence was its bustling commercial district. Among turn-of-the-century firms were Vogwills Coal and Ice Business Office; the Ritchie Box Factory, which packaged chicken parts;
Armstrong Tailoring Factory, where uniforms were made; a barrel factory; and the Diamond Match Co., which made wooden matches and later became Charles Tietzel`s ``regalia`` factory, where backdrops for show and parade floats were made.
Because of the many factories, nearly as many workers commuted to Evergreen Park as there were residents who took the 51-minute trip on the Grand Trunk to the Loop. There were separate waiting rooms for men and women at the village`s 95th Street railroad station, as well as separate residential hotels for factory workers: one at 93d Street and Homan Avenue for women and the other at 92d Street and Turner Avenue for men.
Towering over the rest of the village was Fred Leppin`s Saloon, a three-story frame building at 95th Street and Kedzie Avenue. The Bethel Baptist congregation later purchased the structure--disregarding its use at one time as a saloon, pool hall and ballroom--and moved the building`s first story as its church in 1946 to 96th Street and Sawyer Avenue.
Evergreen Park`s oldest business in continuous operation is the Geis and Crossen Monument Co., now at 3319 W. 91st St. The firm began in 1895 as Geis and Zirkel, shortly after St. Mary`s Cemetery opened northwest of 91st Street and Kedzie Avenue.
Besides undertakers and gravestone makers, saloonkeepers claimed a fair amount of business brought on by St. Mary`s and, in 1910, Evergreen Cemetery to the east. The area around the train station between the two cemeteries was disparagingly known as ``Vinegar Hill.`` Restaurants and taverns there catered to mourners who arrived on the funeral train Monday through Saturday mornings. Huske remembers seeing coffins taken off the trains and loaded onto carts with large wheels that were pulled to the grave site.