|
 |
Illinois, IL

The State of Illinois is a state of the United
States of America, the 21st to be admitted to the Union.
Illinois is the most populous and demographically diverse
state in the Midwest and the fifth most populous in the
nation.
With Chicagoland in the northeast, small
industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in
central and western Illinois, and natural resources like coal,
timber, and petroleum in the south, Illinois has a broad
economic base.
Illinois is an important transportation hub;
the Port of Chicago connects the Great Lakes to the
Mississippi River via the Illinois River. Illinois is often
viewed as a microcosm of the United States; an Associated
Press analysis of 21 demographic factors determined Illinois
was the "most average state," while the city of Peoria has
long been a proverbial social and cultural bellweather.
Between 1300 and 1400 CE, the Mississippian
city of Cahokia had a population of around 40,000, making it
the largest city within the future United States until it was
surpassed by Philadelphia in the 1800s.
About 2,000 Native American hunters and a small
number of French villagers inhabited the area at the time of
the American Revolution.
American settlers began arriving from Kentucky
in the 1810s; they achieved statehood in 1818. The future
metropolis of Chicago was founded in the 1830s. Railroads and
John Deere's invention of the self-scouring steel plow made
central Illinois' rich prairie into some of the world's most
productive and valuable farmlands, attracting immigrant
farmers from Germany and Sweden.
Northern Illinois provided major support for
Illinoisans Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant during the
American Civil War. By 1900, the growth of industry in
northern cities and coal mining in central and southern areas
attracted immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe, and
also made the state a major arsenal in both world wars.
In addition, large numbers of blacks migrated
to Chicago from the South, where they formed a large community
and created the city's famous jazz and blues cultures.
Geography
The state is named for the French adaptation of
an Algonquian language (perhaps Miami) word apparently meaning
"s/he speaks normally" (Miami ilenweewa, Proto-Algonquian *elen-,
"ordinary" and -we·, "to speak").
Alternately, the name is often associated with
the indigenous Illiniwek people, a consortium of Algonquian
tribes that thrived in the area.
The name Illiniwek is frequently (incorrectly)
said to mean "tribe of superior men"; in reality, it only
means "men". The eastern border of Illinois is Lake Michigan.
Its eastern border with Indiana is all of the land west of the
Wabash River, and a north-south line above Post Vincennes, or
87° 31′ 30″ west longitude. Its northern border with Wisconsin
is fixed at 42° 30' north latitude.
Its western border with Missouri and Iowa is
the Mississippi River. Its southern border with Kentucky is
the Ohio River.
Illinois also borders Michigan, but only via a
water boundary in Lake Michigan. Though Illinois lies entirely
in the Interior Plains, it has three major geographical
divisions.
The first is Northern Illinois, dominated by
the Chicago metropolitan area, including the city of Chicago,
its suburbs, and the adjoining exurban area into which the
metropolis is expanding. As defined by the federal government,
the Chicago metro area includes a few counties in Indiana and
Wisconsin and stretches across much of northeastern Illinois.
It is a cosmopolitan city, densely populated,
industrialized, and settled by a wide variety of ethnic
groups. The city of Rockford generally sits along Interstates
80 and 90 and is the state's third largest city Southward and
westward, the second major division is Central Illinois, an
area of mostly flat prairie. Known as the Heart of Illinois,
it is characterized by small towns and mid-sized cities. The
western section (west of the Illinois River) was originally
part of the Military Tract of 1812 and forms the distinctive
western bulge of the state.
Agriculture, particularly corn and soybeans, as
well as educational institutions and manufacturing centers,
figure prominently. Cities include Peoria—the third largest
metropolitan area in Illinois at 370,000—Springfield—the state
capital—Quincy, Decatur, Bloomington-Normal and
Champaign-Urbana.
The third division is Southern Illinois,
comprising the area south of U.S. Route 50, and including
Little Egypt, near the juncture of the Mississippi River and
Ohio River.
This region can be distinguished from the other
two by its warmer climate, different mix of crops (including
some cotton farming in the past), more rugged topography (the
southern tip is unglaciated with the remainder glaciated
during the Illinoian Age and earlier ages), as well as
small-scale oil deposits and coal mining.
The area is a little more populated than the
central part of the state with the population centered in two
areas. First, the Illinois suburbs of St. Louis comprise the
second most populous metropolitan area in Illinois with nearly
600,000 inhabitants, and are known collectively as the
Metro-East. The second area is Williamson County, Jackson
County, Franklin County, Saline County and Perry County. It is
home to around 210,000 residents.
This article is licensed under the
GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the
Wikipedia
article "Illinois".
|