Wolf Point, Chicago

Wolf Point is the location at the confluence of the North, South and Main Branches of the Chicago River in the present day Near North Side, Loop, and Near West Side community areas of Chicago. This fork in the river is historically important in the development of early Chicago. This was the location of Chicago's first three taverns, its first hotel, Sauganash Hotel, its first ferry, its first drug store, its first church, and the first bridges across the Chicago River. The name is said to possibly derive from a Native American Chief whose name translated to wolf, but alternate theories exist.

Historically, the west bank of the river at the fork was called "Wolf Point," but in the 1820s and 1830s it came to denote the entire area and the settlement that grew up around the river-fork. Wolf Point is now often used more specifically to refer to a plot of land on the north side of the fork in the Near North Side community area that is owned by the Kennedy family as part of the larger Merchandise Mart Center complex. Today the north bank at the fork, is the location of a high-rise and a construction site, the west bank includes a condominium high rise and railroad tracks, and the south bank serves as the transition point of Wacker Drive from an east-west street to a north-south street.

The origin of the name, Wolf Point, is unknown. In her 1856 memoir Wau-Bun, Juliette Kinzie states that 'the place was then called Wolf Point, from its having been the residence of an Indian named "Moa-way," or "the Wolf."' Other alternate explanations are that it was so-named after the landlord of what would later be called the Wolf Point Tavern killed a ferocious wolf and hung a painted sign of a wolf outside his tavern to commemorate the event, or that it was named by a soldier at Fort Dearborn because it was a place where wolves would gather at night. Originally the term Wolf Point referred to the west bank of the Chicago River at the fork junction of its branches, but it gradually came to refer to the whole region around the forks and in modern usage is often more specifically used to mean the plot of land on the north side of the forks. The confluence of the three branches of the river near Wolf Point provided inspiration for Chicago's Municipal Device, a Y-shaped, city identification symbol that can be seen on many buildings in Chicago, and on city owned vehicles.

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