Hegewisch, Chicago

Chicago Assembly (sometimes referred to as Torrence Avenue Assembly) is currently Ford Motor Company's oldest continuously operated automobile manufacturing plant. It is located at E. 130th Street and Torrence Avenue in the Hegewisch section of Chicago, Illinois. Chicago Assembly currently builds the sixth-generation Ford Explorer and the second-generation Lincoln Aviator.

Hegewisch is a commuter rail station in the city of Chicago, Illinois in the Hegewisch neighborhood, that serves the South Shore Line north to Millennium Station and east to the cities of Hammond, East Chicago, Gary, Michigan City, and South Bend, Indiana. The Hegewisch station has high-level platforms, as part of NICTD's continuing effort to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.Hegewisch is the South Shore Line's easternmost stop in Chicago and the last one in Illinois outbound, and offers pay parking. It is the only Illinois station on the South Shore Line not shared with the Metra Electric Line. There is a unique arrangement at the station as far as fares are concerned: although this station is a South Shore Line stop and the tracks are owned by NICTD, the station and the parking lots are actually owned by Metra and thus subject to Metra's fares, because the station is within the state of Illinois. Thus, when the South Shore Line adjusts its fares, the fares for Hegewisch do not change, but if Metra adjusts its fares, the fares at Hegewisch are adjusted accordingly. Having broken ground in July 1991, current station facility was officially opened June 2, 1992. The station has a 3,000 square foot building, and cost Metra $1.7 million to construct. Soon after the current station building opened, the former station facility (located approximately 1,500 feet west of the current one) was demolished.The station is just west of an at-grade junction with a former Pennsylvania Railroad branch line (ex-South Chicago & Southern). The line began at the main line near the Illinois–Indiana state line and continued to a connection with the line to Logansport, Indiana. As of 2011, the tracks only exist to the former New York Central Railroad (ex-Michigan Central) line. The Chicago and Western Indiana Railroad main line (carrying trains of the Erie, Monon, Chicago and Eastern Illinois, and Wabash railroads) ran parallel to the South Shore. The Nickel Plate Railroad also had its main line to the west of the C&WI.A station typology adopted by the Chicago Plan Commission on October 16, 2014, assigns the Hegewisch station a typology of Mixed Residential/Industrial Neighborhood (MRIN). This typology is an area in which the Metra station serves both residential and industrial uses. Like most of the MRIN stations, it does not have access to CTA rail.

William W. Powers State Recreation Area is an Illinois state park administered by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources on 580 acres (230 ha) in the Hegewisch community area of the City of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The area includes 419 acres (170 ha) of water in Wolf Lake that provides about 6 miles (10 km) of shoreline to fishermen. The park hosts about half a million visitors annually. The park contains numerous species, and is one of the most important biological sites in the Chicago region.

Thomas J. O'Brien Lock & Dam is a lock on the Calumet River on the south side of Chicago. (The Calumet River is a tributary to the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, which flows into the Des Plaines River, the Illinois River and then the Mississippi.) The dam is 326 river miles (525 km) from the Mississippi-Illinois confluence. The up-river side of the dam is at Lake Michigan's level, 577 feet (176 m) above sea level. The lock dimensions are 1,000 by 110 feet (305 m × 34 m). The Lock & Dam is named for Thomas J. O’Brien, who was a U.S. Representative for the 6th District of Illinois from 1933 to 1938 and again from 1943 to 1964.

Wolf Lake is an 804-acre (325.4 ha) lake that straddles the Indiana and Illinois state line near Lake Michigan. It is smaller than it was prior to settlement by European colonizers because of infilling for development around the edges. Despite years of environmental damage caused by heavy industries, transportation infrastructure, urban runoff and filling of wetlands, it is one of the most important biological sites in the Chicago region. Wolf Lake is located between Hammond, Indiana and the Hegewisch community area of Chicago, Illinois. It was once connected by an open channel to Lake Michigan on the Indiana side of the lake, but this channel was cut off for development on its northern side. Indianapolis Boulevard (U.S. 41) and various railroad and industrial facilities are located in former wetlands on the northeastern side of the lake where it once connected to Lake Michigan. There are currently proposals to reopen a channel between Wolf Lake and Lake Michigan. The Illinois portion of the lake consists of five, interconnected impoundments separated by dikes. The dikes were constructed in the late 1950s so that separate portions of the lake could be drained for the purpose of dredging for fill to use in the construction of the Chicago Skyway. The western impoundments are now part of the William W. Powers State Recreation Area and are drained by Indian Creek to the Calumet River. The Wolf Lake water level determines the drainage to Lake Michigan because the connecting Calumet River flows southward during elevated levels and northward during lowered levels. The Indiana portion of the lake consists of three, interconnected impoundments that are also separated by dikes. The longest dike, running roughly parallel to State Line Road and traversing the entire length of the lake, contains railroad tracks belonging to the Indiana Harbor Belt.The Indiana Toll Road (Interstate 90) runs through the middle of the lake just inside the Indiana state line. The lake is also transected by a number of railroad causeways, some of them no longer in use. Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad has an active spur line that runs through the Illinois side of the lake in the Hegewisch community area. Calumet Avenue (U.S. 41) is on its eastern side, with a strip of parkland in between. There are currently several large industrial properties adjacent to the lake and on filled wetlands adjoining the lake, including Cargill and Unilever on the north side. Other property near the edge of the lake is being used for housing. A significant portion of the property around the lake is now parkland or nature preserve, including the Eggers Woods parcel of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County. Other neighboring lakes include Lake George, Lake Calumet, Powderhorn Lake and Lake Michigan. There was also another lake that lay to the west between Wolf Lake and the river. It was called Hyde Lake and was filled in by Republic Steel. A swampy area near 130th Street and the railroad tracks is the only remnant of that lake.

Burnham is a village in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The population was 4,046 at the 2020 census. The ZIP code is 60633. Burnham has a Chicago ZIP code, and is often mistakenly considered part of Chicago. It is, however, an independent municipality lying just south of the Chicago city limits. Burnham was named for Telford Burnham who drew its plat; not, as is widely assumed, by Chicago city planner and architect Daniel Burnham. There are two sections of Burnham. The westernmost section surrounds Torrence Avenue, a north–south street. Torrence Avenue leaves this part of Burnham via a bridge, with Chicago on the other side. The eastern section surrounds Burnham Avenue, another north–south street. This section of Burnham ends at Brainard Avenue, where the Hegewisch neighborhood of Chicago lies on the other side. Upon entering Chicago, Burnham Avenue becomes Avenue O.

In the Memorial Day massacre of 1937, the Chicago Police Department shot and killed ten unarmed demonstrators in Chicago, on May 30, 1937. The incident took place during the Little Steel strike in the United States.

AVR 661 is an R-1 type United States Air Force "crash boat", a boat used in air-sea rescues. It is 85 feet long and has two Packard Marine 4M-2500 engines of 1500 horsepower, instead of the normal three that PT boats usually were equipped with. It has a top speed of 40 knots. The craft was unarmed normally, but in the event of deployment to hostile areas could have been armed with a variety of light weapons. These types of boats were used to rescue aircraft crews at sea. The designation AVR was used for "Aircraft Rescue Vessel", so it was one of the small, fast craft, that were used for rescuing pilots from downed planes. AVR 661 was built in 1943 for the Army Air Corps and served in the Gulf of Mexico during World War II as one of the Crash boats of World War 2.After the war the Air Force sold many of its crash boats to private parties for use as yachts or commercial vessels. Many others were used as targets and sunk. AVR 661 was kept in active service assigned to Tyndall Air Force Base, near Panama City, Florida. During the Vietnam War, AVR 661 towed targets for helicopter gunship training and anti-mine training as well as to recover drones.In 1971, the Air Force decided to preserve AVR 661 as one of the last remaining crash boats from World War II. She was to be placed on display at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, near Dayton, Ohio. That plan was scrapped as the boat was too large for the cargo plane. She was then donated to the PT Boat Museum in Memphis, Tennessee That, too, proved problematic. As she was being run upriver to Memphis, she struck a submerged obstruction and damaged her running gear. Once at Memphis, the boat sank at her moorings.The US Naval Sea Cadet Corps expressed an interest in salvaging the crash boat. The boat was placed on a barge and shipped to Chicago. The Sea Cadets' "Chicago Division" restored the boat (including removing the tree that was growing in the engine room) and used it as a training vessel for a short time. Running out of operating funds, they planned donate her to a museum, but donated to the Northern Illinois Sea Scouts for training.

Powderhorn Lake, within Illinois but close to the state line, is a 48 acres (19 ha) lake that is part of the sand wetlands of the Indiana Dunes, most of which are located in the nearby state of Indiana. It is the centerpiece of the 192 acres (78 ha) Powderhorn Lake Forest Preserve, part of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County in Cook County, Illinois.Powderhorn Lake drains into the Grand Calumet River, which is historically part of the Lake Michigan watershed. Man-made engineering now moves the Grand Calumet River’s water into the Cal-Sag canal and valley system, which drains into the Des Plaines River and ultimately into the Illinois River.

George Washington High School is a public 4–year high school located in the East Side neighborhood on the far southeast side of Chicago, Illinois, United States. Washington is operated by the Chicago Public Schools district. Washington serves the students of nearby neighborhoods: Hegewisch, South Deering. The school is named for the first President of the United States, George Washington.

WPWX (92.3 FM) is an Urban Contemporary radio station licensed to Hammond, Indiana and serving the Chicago metropolitan area in addition to Northwest Indiana, and is owned by Crawford Broadcasting. The station broadcasts from a transmitter a few hundred feet west of the Illinois/Indiana state line in Burnham, Illinois, with studios on Calumet Avenue in Hammond.

Wolf Lake Speedway was a racing venue located in Hammond, Indiana. The speedway opened on July 16, 1933, and operated until 1936. The track was described as "the World’s Most Unique Automobile Race Course."Wolf Lake Speedway contained two tracks. One track was a one-mile (1.6 km) sand track that was completely surrounded by Wolf Lake. A portion of the lake was drained to allow for the track's construction. This track hosted auto racing, while speedboat racing was held in the lake in the vicinity of the track. The other was a 1⁄5-mile (0.32 km) dirt and oil surfaced midget track, constructed in 1935, located between Wolf Lake and Calumet Avenue. Midget car racing took place at this track, with the opening race on June 9, 1935, and races continuing until 1936.Among the drivers who raced at Wolf Lake Speedway were Emil Andres, Frank Brisko, Duke Nalon, Harold Shaw, Jimmy Snyder, and Tony Willman.In 1935, Wolf Lake Speedway hosted a series of weekly Amateur Athletic Union boxing matches.