Independence Day
Tuesday, July 4, 1871
Plans have been announced for today's Fourth of July observances. The feature horse race at the Dexter Park track, located in the southwest corner of Chicago, will match James Van Etta’s Lady Douglas against Henry Graves’s Chicago, for a purse of $5,000; Wright’s Grove will witness a sham fight, a baby show, a fat man’s race, fireworks, dancing, a torchlight procession, and a speech by attorney, politician, and former Lincoln adviser Norman P. Judd; and the White Stockings professional baseball team will play the Rockford Forest Citys. In downtown Chicago, the city's worthies will ride in a procession of carriages up LaSalle Street and through the new tunnel beneath the Main Branch of the Chicago River as part of the ceremonies marking the inauguration of this structure, which is intended to avert delays caused by bridge openings.
