JACKSON PARK — Jackson Park is one of the first Chicago parks to get its own app with the launch of a new tour for mobile phones.
Jackson Park in Your Pocket is available through the Vamonde mapping app and leads visitors through a self-guided tour of a park packed with history.
The app is able to pick out a person’s location in the park and guide them to current landmarks like the Museum of Science and Industry or reveal ones now long gone from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.
“Bertha Palmer was rich, beautiful and smart,” starts the section about the Women’s Building from the exposition and its role in the suffrage movement.
Standing where the Women’s Building once stood, the app provides pictures and videos of what it would have looked like late in the 19th century.
The app gets into some history that is not quite finished either, providing a quick rundown of the history the part of the park where Barack Obama will build his presidential center.
The site had its role in the world's fair, when Casey Jones would ease trains into the central terminal. It even strays a little outside the park to mention the spot where Buffalo Bill set up his own show to compete with the exposition on a site that’s now Hyde Park High School.
The Jackson Park Advisory Council recently ramped up guided tours, with ongoing tours of the exposition’s sites by Friends of White City Tours at 11 a.m. every Saturday through October.
The free app is the latest effort by the advisory council to push visitors beyond the Museum of Science and Industry to explore more of the park.
The app is available by downloading Vamonde and searching for Jackson Park.
