America at 250: How Chicago's rich industrial history helped define a nation

As America turns 250 this year, CBS News Chicago is taking a look at how Chicago and its rich history of industry has helped shape the nation.

Water, wildlife, and wide-open spaces; the prairie's most valuable assets gave birth to what would become Chicago, and those same factors might be what drives us forward again in the age of artificial intelligence.

"So much of what we associate with daily life has some connection to Chicago," said Paul Durica, director of exhibitions at the Chicago History Museum. "You could pick almost any product, right?"

Many of some of the most familiar corporate brands have headquarters in Chicago, from McDonald's to Walgreens to Molson Coors to Motorola to Groupon.

Why is Chicago winning them?

"Because Chicago has this very and important legacy as a major city in the United States," Durica said. "What drew Europeans to the area was the industry that was kind of predominant throughout the Great Lakes region, and that was the fur trade. … Very quickly, people realized that the entire region has all of these natural resources that can be harnessed and lead to development of other industries."

The fur trade gave way to the lumber industry; both using lakes, rivers, and canals in the earliest days.

But the driving force that kept Chicago in the pole position for centuries would be transportation, and a keen eye for what's around the corner.

"Our main competitor was St. Louis," said John F. McDonald, professor emeritus of economics at University of Illinois Chicago, and author of Chicago: An Economic History. "What St. Louis failed to do was to jump on board the railroad technologies."

Durica said the railroad industry transformed Chicago.

"Chicago becomes the center of the nation's railroad networks," he said. "And it had the manpower. It had immigrant communities moving here that could build out the industry. It had the raw resources that it needed to actually construct the tracks."

McDonald said, at the time, Chicago was the fastest growing city in the world; from 3,000 people to 1 million in just 50 years.

The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 might have set the city back, but not for long. One year later came a spark of a different kind from the mind of a man named Montgomery Ward.

"He had a catalog right off the bat with like 150 pages of things you could buy; clothes and tools," McDonald said. "We can get stuff shipped in, and then we can ship it out, but also we can make it here."

Chicago's secret sauce of leading in transportation remains alive and well at O'Hare and Midway airports. And the city remains at the center of the rail industry in the U.S.

As it appears artificial intelligence and quantum computing will drive future growth, Chicago's world class colleges and universities position us well.

"Studies of how well does a metropolitan area grow, the one variable that keeps showing up again and again and again is the educational level of your people," McDonald said.

"You've got the Fermilab and Argonne [National Laboratory], and that kind of grows out of that legacy of the University of Chicago," Durica said.

Remember the water, wildlife and wide-open spaces that gave Chicago that first spark? Those who look at Chicago with a historically long lens feel history just might be on the verge of repeating itself.

"As these industries develop, they're going to require a great deal of the same natural resources that fueled Chicago's growth throughout its history; a lot of water and a lot of power is needed for data centers," Durica said. "So the very same things that drew first indigenous people, this is just like a crossroads of all these different industries and people and communities throughout the course of United States history."

"Chicago is said to be the city that works, and that's basically true from the moment that it first emerged," Durica added.

As the country turns 250 this year, Chicago turns 193, and while we zeroed in on the highlights, there are deep struggles.

It's a racially divided town. While we have great universities, our public schools struggle, and of late downtown business occupancy has plummeted.

But experts say we've seen headwinds before, and time and again Chicago peeks around the corner of what's next and uses it to help solve the problems of today.