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".