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Echo

Established 1854

A majority Black neighborhood since 1950, Echo hasn’t received the funding afforded the other neighborhoods north of the river. Echo has more in common with the working-class neighborhoods of St. Patrick’s and Commerce City. While many of the city’s neighborhoods began with a specific cultural identity which shifted and blended over time, Echo began as a Black community, became heterogeneous at a time when most of the neighborhoods were built around specific immigrant communities, and returned to its roots through the Great Migration.

History of Echo

1853

Prior to the establishment of The Docks in 1853, Lakeside Park was a landing area for trappers and traders traveling north and west to the lake country watershed and the shipping boats that followed the shoreline of the great lake to the eastern waterways.

1852-1894: Competing Forms of Civilization - Government, Business, and Industry

Originally a marshy lowland, Walleye’s Village grew into a community of cabins and shacks built on stilts to keep them out of the water. For many years, the settlement resembled a bayou shanty town more than a northern mining camp or farming community.1852-1894: Competing Forms of Civilization - Government, Business, and Industry

1883

In 1883, the people of Walleye’s Village dredged a canal to drain the marshy lowland. By now a diverse group of African American, Eastern Europeans, and Asians, the community grew into something more permanent, a settlement that existed separate from its relationship to the growing city on the hill behind.1852-1894: Competing Forms of Civilization - Government, Business, and Industry

1913

In 1913, Walleye’s Village was incorporated into the city as Echo, named for the sound of the wind coming off the lake. No one alive remembered Walleye. Most thought the village was named for the fish, and the name Echo had a more melodious connotation. 1894-1950 Development of Standards, Tradition, and Expectation

1914

When industry increased during the First World War, Echo became the preferred destination for migrating families looking for work and moving north during the Great Migration. 1894-1950 Development of Standards, Tradition, and Expectation

1950

By 1950, Echo had again become a predominantly black neighborhood.1950-1980: Counterculture

1970’s

In the 1970’s, crime rates rose in what had long been a working-class neighborhood. 1950-1980: Counterculture

Late 80’s

Crime peaked in the late 80’s and early nineties.1980-2000: Darkness/Crime

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