In early twentieth-century America, affluent city-dwellers made a
habit of venturing out of doors and vacationing in resorts and
national parks. Yet the rich and the privileged were not the only
ones who sought respite in nature. In this pathbreaking book,
historian Colin Fisher demonstrates that working-class white
immigrants and African Americans in rapidly industrializing Chicago
also fled the urban environment during their scarce leisure time.
If they had the means, they traveled to wilderness parks just past
the city limits as well as to rural resorts in Wisconsin and
Michigan. But lacking time and money, they most often sought out
nature within the city itself--at urban parks and commercial
groves, along the Lake Michigan shore, even in vacant lots.
Chicagoans enjoyed a variety of outdoor recreational activities in
these green spaces, and they used them to forge ethnic and
working-class community. While narrating a crucial era in the
history of Chicago's urban development, Fisher makes important
interventions in debates about working-class leisure, the history
of urban parks, environmental justice, the African American
experience, immigration history, and the cultural history of
nature.