The street follows the route of the
Southwestern Plank Road, a
plank road opened in 1848 across swampy terrain between Chicago and
Riverside, Illinois, and, by 1851, extended to
Naperville. In the 1920s the broad avenue became an important arterial carrying auto traffic through the city's West Side. Portions of the avenue carried
U.S. Route 66 from the city through adjacent suburbs. It carried US 32 until 1934. Ogden Avenue used to carry U.S. Route 34 to its end as well.
Former extension to Lincoln Park The 1909
Plan of Chicago recommended an entire network of new diagonal streets, but the only one ever built was the extension in the 1920s of Ogden from Union Park through the
Old Town neighborhood to end at Clark Street opposite
Lincoln Park. This extension, largely built in the 1920s, was completed in 1934 with bridges and a connecting viaduct across
Goose Island and the North Branch of the
Chicago River. In the late 1960s, as part of an
urban renewal project for Old Town, the street was vacated in this area and sold off for development. In recent decades, additional portions of Ogden have been abandoned and vacated. The avenue now ends a short distance north of Chicago Avenue. == Major intersections ==