<P> The overwhelming sensation about the neighborhood was the smell of the community caused not just by the packing plants located immediately to the east, but also by the 345 - acre Chicago Union Stock Yards containing 2,300 pens of livestock, located further east from the packing plants . </P> <P> Settlement in the area that was to become known as the "Back of the Yards" began in the 1850s before there were any meat packers or stockyards in the area . At this time the area was known as the "Town of Lake ." Indeed, the area would continue to be called Town of Lake until 1939 . Witness that the newspaper of the area was called the Town of Lake Journal . Only with the founding of the community organization called the "Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council" in 1939 did the neighborhood west and south of the meat packinghouses start being called the "Back of the Yards ." It was a name that the residents proudly claimed as their own . In 1939, the Town of Lake Journal officially changed its name to Back of the Yards Journal . </P> <P> Pioneers to the area first called "Town of Lake" were S.S. Crocker and John Caffrey . Indeed, Crocker earned the nickname "Father of the Town of Lake ." By February 1865 the area was incorporated officially as "Town of Lake" the area still consisted of fewer than 700 persons . In the early 1860s the meat packing industry of the United States was still located in Cincinnati, Ohio, the original "Porkopolis" of the pre-Civil War era . However, with the end of the American Civil War, the meat packing industry had started to move westward along with the westward migration of the population of the United States . For the meat packing industry moving west meant coming to Chicago . As early as 1827, Archibauld Clybourn had established himself as a butcher in a log slaughter house on the north branch of the Chicago River and supplied most to the garrison of Fort Dearborn . Other small butchers came later . In 1848, the Bull's Head Stockyard began operations at Madison Street and Ogden Avenue on the West Side of Chicago . Operations for this early stockyard, however, still meant holding and feeding cattle and hogs in transit to meat packing plants further east--Indianapolis and, of course, Cincinnati . </P> <P> The prosperity of the stockyards was due to both the concentration of railroads and the evolution of refrigerated railroad cars . Its decline was due to further advances in post-World War II transportation and distribution . Direct sales of livestock from breeders to packers, facilitated by advancement in interstate trucking, made it cheaper to slaughter animals where they were raised and excluded the intermediary stockyards . At first, the major meatpacking companies resisted change, but Swift and Armour both surrendered and vacated their plants in the Yards in the 1950s . </P>

Which city was known as porkopolis after its slaughterhouse district