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Nearly
everything
in ILLINOIS revolves around Chicago,
the largest and most exciting of all the Great
Lakes cities. Set at the state's northeastern
corner, on the shores of Lake Michigan,
Chicago has a skyline to rival New York
City's, plus a gamut of top-rated museums,
restaurants and cafes, and innumerable bars
and nightclubs paying homage to the city's
strong jazz and blues heritage. Seventy-five
percent of the state's twelve million
population live within commuting distance of
Chicago's energetic center, which controls the
bulk of the state economy – Illinois is the
third largest agricultural producer in the US.
The sole exception to the endless flat
prairies elsewhere is far to the south, where
the forested Shawnee Hills rise between
the Mississippi and Ohio rivers.
The contrast between the quiet rural
hinterlands and the buzzing urban center could
hardly be greater. That said, Illinois does
hold a few places to look out for, though
apart from a couple of mildly exciting college
towns, most are of historic rather than
current interest. First explored and settled
by the French, in 1763 the area that's now
Illinois was sold to the English, farming the
western extent of their vast Virginia colony.
Granted statehood in 1818, Illinois remained a
distant frontier until the mid-1830s when,
after a series of uprisings, the native Sauk
and Black Hawk were subjugated and
settlers began to arrive in sizeable numbers.
Among these were the first followers of Joseph
Smith, founder of the Mormon Church, who
established a large colony along the
Mississippi at Nauvoo. The Mormons met
with suspicion and persecution and, after
Smith was murdered by a lynch mob in 1844,
fled west to Utah.
Other early immigrants included the young Abraham
Lincoln, who practiced law from 1837
onwards in Springfield, the state
capital and home of a wide range of
Lincolniana, including his restored home, his
law offices and various other period buildings
and artifacts, as well as his monumental tomb.
Indeed, Illinois' self-proclaimed nickname –
emblazoned on its car license plates – is
"Land of Lincoln", and many other
central Illinois towns try to claim important
roles in the making of the sixteenth US
president.
Click here to go to Illinois State
web page |
