Cross-country flights on our local carrier, United, often entail a change of planes at ORD, O’Hare International outside Chicago. As an obsessive window-seater on airplanes, I’m always struck by the flatness of the terrain in that part of the world. Illinois is essentially flat and monotonous—its highest point (Charles Mound, 1,235 ft) is lower than many of Chicago’s skyscrapers. The city itself, with its Euclidean street layout, is pancake-flat. 

Chicago skyline (Payton Chung, Creative Commons)

I thought of this on the Fourth of July as I rode with a pal, in what’s becoming an annual tradition, on the Ferris wheel at the Eureka boardwalk fair. In the late afternoon, the city and bay viewed from on-high were the stuff of Middle-earth: clean, vibrant and glistening. And so naturally to an appreciation of the short-lived bridge engineer (he died of typhoid fever at age 37), George Washington Gale Ferris Jr., whose original wheel was the hit of the 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition. 

Imagine yourself a visitor to the fair. You’ve lived in Illinois all your life—perhaps in Chicago itself—and your world, until the day you ride the great wheel, has been pretty two-dimensional. The highest you’ve ever stood above ground is maybe the third story of a brick hotel. You have yet to fly on a plane—or even hear of such a thing, ten years before Kitty Hawk. You buy a ticket and enter one of the 36 cars, each of which holds 60 people—40 seated, the rest standing. The great steam engine puts the wheel in motion and, slowly, up you go, no longer an earthbound mortal but—for the first time in your life—ascending to the heavens. 

1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition (Public domain)

OK, not quite the heavens, but a quite respectable 250 feet above ground as you enter another dimension. Until now your life has been north-south and east-west. Now add up-down—you’re practically flying! Your world—the city itself, the Central Plains to the west and south, Lake Michigan to the east— is laid out below, a world we now take for granted every time we take an airplane flight. But back then George Ferris’s steel wheel must have been scary-exhilarating, a taste of the third dimension.

Ferris, as I say, died young, three years after the fair. His wheel lasted a little longer: it was dismantled and reconstructed in Chicago’s Lincoln Park following the exposition, then rebuilt a final time for the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair (“Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis!”), only to be demolished for scrap two years later. But Ferris’ memory lives on in his many eponymous wheels, including the one that transported us to the skies right here last week in Eureka. Here’s looking at you, George!

2016 Eureka boardwalk fair (Kim Bergel)

Eureka’s very own Ferris wheel—for five days (Reesa Bergel)