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11. Union Stock Yard Gate – Chicago, IL
Once sprawling over 475 acres, the Union Stock Yards operated for a over a century before closing in 1971.
All that remains today is a rugged limestone gate, where thousands of workers and livestock once passed through.
This site now commemorates Upton Sinclair‘s timeless novel, The Jungle, in which he chronicles the life of a Lithuanian immigrant and his quest for the American Dream in the filthy Chicago stock yards.
The book not not only exposed the unsanitary conditions of the meatpacking industry, but it is also said to have influenced President Theodore Roosevelt in passing the Food and Drug Acts in 1906.
