Minuteman Park

In the late 1960s, the Chicago Plan Commission identified nine acres of vacant property near Midway Airport for park development. At the time the surrounding Clearing and Garfield Ridge neighborhoods were both experiencing tremendous population growth and a shortage of recreational facilities. The Chicago Park District purchased the property in 1971, using U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development grant funds. The following year, the park district improved the site with ball fields and tennis courts. After 1986, a mobile trailer/fieldhouse provided space for indoor activities. (A newer model replaced the original trailer ten years later.) Minuteman Park expanded in 1990, when the park district began leasing six adjacent acres of vacant land from the city. The park's patriotic name was selected in 1976 through a Bicentennial Committee contest conducted in the surrounding 23rd Ward. The minutemen were American colonial militiamen who pledged to take up arms at a minute's notice to aid the cause of Revolution. The first group of minutemen formed in Worcester County, Massachusetts in September, 1774. Similar units were organized in nearby counties in subsequent months. On April 19, 1775, the Battles of Lexington and Concord provided the first test of the minutemen. Seven hundred British troops engaged 77 minutemen on the village green at Lexington, Massachusetts. Unable to hold their ground at Lexington, the colonists turned the tide at the Concord Bridge, where no more than 400 patriots forced the British to withdraw. The American success at Concord prompted the Continental Congress to recommend the formation of minuteman units in other colonies.