Wanderlust World Wanderlust World Chicago was founded by Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, a Haitian-born trader of African and French descent. He was born in Saint-Marc, Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) around 1745.
In the late 1770s, he established a prosperous trading post at the mouth of the Chicago River (near today's Michigan Avenue Bridge), becoming the first permanent non-Indigenous resident. His settlement became the nucleus of the future city. He sold his holdings in 1800 and retired to Missouri, where he died in 1818. The city officially recognized him as its founder in 1968.