Fort Dearborn
Fort Dearborn was a fort built in 1803 along a river in the Illinois Territory, in what is now the city of Chicago. It was named after the Secretary of War, who at the time was Henry Dearborn.
The original fort, shown in the image of the stamps here, was completely burned in a battle in 1812 by Native Americans. They attacked and won the battle in fifteen minutes. They might not have been so quickly successful had not the fort commander ordered all of his troops to leave the fort to meet the attacking soldiers. It’s more difficult to attack troops defending themselves in a fortified position.
The fort was rebuilt four years later. It was eventually destroyed, though, after two more fires and erosion from the river – and never rebuilt.
I can understand that they might want to remember the fort and the people lost, but I don’t know why they decided to issue this stamp in conjunction with the Chicago World’s Fair, especially with the theme of A Century of Progress – unless it was to say, we no longer build structures that can be destroyed so easily.
Note
This page contains a souvenir sheet. It’s the complete set of a single stamp issue. It’s kind of large, but not for a sheet of stamps: this sheet contains twenty-five stamps where a normal sheet might contain a hundred stamps. There were a few souvenir sheets issued during this time, some containing as few as four, even just one stamp. You can see some souvenir sheets on the next couple of pages (Admiral Byrd and Mt. Rainier), as well as on an album page, Farley where I describe them.
Contains 1 spots: own 1 – 1 unused, 0 used.
Page is finished.
Album or Web Page Last changed Mar 15, 2025
Stamp Details
The table below lists information about the stamps shown on this page of Lighthouse’s stamp album. For more details about a particular stamp, click on its description. That will take you to the related web page of Colnect.
spot |
own |
catalog |
subject |
description |
comment |
Souvenir Sheet
✓ |
730 |
Ft. Dearborn |
25¢ (aug 1933) |
Footnotes
Spot refers to the postion of the stamp on the album page (e.g., 3.2 indicates row 3, position 2).
Amt. is an abbreviation for the face amount of the stamp.
Own indicates the stamp status: ✓ for unused; ✗ for used or canceled; ⭑ signifies I ordered one; ; ✨ indicates it was bought recently; ✠ means an auction bid is pending; and ◎ is used, and it costs too much for unused.
To search by catalog number, go to the search box and enter it in the catalog number box. However, it’s a bit broken; I need to fix it.
