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Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area , and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Other metropolitan areas include Peoria and Rockford , as well as Springfield , its capital.
Of the fifty U. Illinois has a highly diverse economy , with the global city of Chicago in the northeast, major industrial and agricultural hubs in the north and center, and natural resources such as coal, timber, and petroleum in the south. Owing to its central location and favorable geography, the state is a major transportation hub : the Port of Chicago has access to the Atlantic Ocean through the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence Seaway and to the Gulf of Mexico from the Mississippi River via the Illinois Waterway.
Additionally, the Mississippi, Ohio , and Wabash rivers form parts of the state's boundaries. Chicago's O'Hare International Airport has been among the world's ten busiest airports for decades. Illinois has long been considered a microcosm of the United States and a bellwether in American culture, exemplified by the phrase Will it play in Peoria? What is now Illinois was inhabited for thousands of years by various indigenous cultures, including the advanced civilization centered in the Cahokia region.
The French were the first Europeans to arrive, settling near the Mississippi River in the 17th century, in the region they called Illinois Country , as part of the sprawling colony of New France. Following U. Illinois was part of the United States' oldest territory, the Northwest Territory , and in it achieved statehood. The Erie Canal brought increased commercial activity in the Great Lakes, and the small settlement of Chicago became one of the fastest growing cities in the world, benefiting from its location as one of the few natural harbors in southwestern Lake Michigan.
In the midth century, the Illinois and Michigan Canal and a sprawling railroad network greatly facilitated trade, commerce, and settlement, making the state a transportation hub for the nation. By , the growth of industrial jobs in the northern cities, and coal mining in the central and southern areas, attracted immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Illinois became one of America's most industrialized states and remains a major manufacturing center.
Three U. Grant , and Barack Obama ; additionally, Ronald Reagan was born and raised in the state. Today, Illinois honors Lincoln with its official state slogan Land of Lincoln , which has been displayed on its license plates since American scholars previously thought the name Illinois meant 'man' or 'men' in the Miami-Illinois language , with the original iliniwek transformed via French into Illinois.
The name Illiniwek has also been said to mean 'tribe of superior men', [18] which is a false etymology. The current spelling form, Illinois , began to appear in the early s, when French colonists had settled in the western area. The Illinois's name for themselves, as attested in all three of the French missionary-period dictionaries of Illinois, was Inoka , of unknown meaning and unrelated to the other terms. American Indians of successive cultures lived along the waterways of the Illinois area for thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans.
The Koster Site has been excavated and demonstrates 7, years of continuous habitation. Cahokia , the largest regional chiefdom and Urban Center of the Pre-Columbian Mississippian culture , was located near present-day Collinsville, Illinois. They built an urban complex of more than platform and burial mounds , a acre 20 ha plaza larger than 35 football fields, [21] and a woodhenge of sacred cedar, all in a planned design expressing the culture's cosmology.
Monks Mound , the center of the site, is the largest Pre-Columbian structure north of the Valley of Mexico. It is ft 30 m high, ft m long, ft m wide, and covers The finely crafted ornaments and tools recovered by archaeologists at Cahokia include elaborate ceramics, finely sculptured stonework, carefully embossed and engraved copper and mica sheets, and one funeral blanket for an important chief fashioned from 20, shell beads.
These artifacts indicate that Cahokia was truly an urban center, with clustered housing, markets, and specialists in toolmaking, hide dressing, potting, jewelry making, shell engraving, weaving and salt making. The civilization vanished in the 15th century for unknown reasons, but historians and archeologists have speculated that the people depleted the area of resources. Many indigenous tribes engaged in constant warfare. According to Suzanne Austin Alchon, "At one site in the central Illinois River valley, one third of all adults died as a result of violent injuries.
The small French settlements continued, although many French migrated west to Ste. Genevieve and St. Louis, Missouri , to evade British rule. A few British soldiers were posted in Illinois, but few British or American settlers moved there, as the Crown made it part of the territory reserved for Indians west of the Appalachians, and then part of the British Province of Quebec.
In a compromise, Virginia and other states that made various claims ceded the area to the new United States in the s and it became part of the Northwest Territory , administered by the federal government and later organized as states. The Illinois-Wabash Company was an early claimant to much of Illinois.
The Illinois Territory was created on February 3, , with its capital at Kaskaskia , an early French settlement. During the discussions leading up to Illinois's admission to the Union , the proposed northern boundary of the state was moved twice.
Such a boundary would have left Illinois with no shoreline on Lake Michigan at all. However, as Indiana had successfully been granted a 10 mi 16 km northern extension of its boundary to provide it with a usable lakefront, the original bill for Illinois statehood, submitted to Congress on January 23, , stipulated a northern border at the same latitude as Indiana's, which is defined as 10 miles north of the southernmost extremity of Lake Michigan.
However, the Illinois delegate, Nathaniel Pope , wanted more, and lobbied to have the boundary moved further north. This shift added 8, sq mi 22, km 2 to the state, including the lead mining region near Galena. More importantly, it added nearly 50 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline and the Chicago River.
Pope and others envisioned a canal that would connect the Chicago and Illinois rivers and thus connect the Great Lakes to the Mississippi. In , Illinois became the 21st U. The capital remained at Kaskaskia, headquartered in a small building rented by the state. In , Vandalia became the capital, and over the next 18 years, three separate buildings were built to serve successively as the capitol building.
In , the state legislators representing Sangamon County , under the leadership of state representative Abraham Lincoln, succeeded in having the capital moved to Springfield , [32] where a fifth capitol building was constructed.
A sixth capitol building was erected in , which continues to serve as the Illinois capitol today. Though it was ostensibly a " free state ", there was nonetheless slavery in Illinois. The ethnic French had owned black slaves since the s, and American settlers had already brought slaves into the area from Kentucky. Slavery was nominally banned by the Northwest Ordinance, but that was not enforced for those already holding slaves.
When Illinois became a state in , the Ordinance no longer applied, and about slaves were held in the state. As the southern part of the state, later known as "Egypt" or "Little Egypt", [33] [34] was largely settled by migrants from the South, the section was hostile to free blacks. Settlers were allowed to bring slaves with them for labor, but, in , state residents voted against making slavery legal.
Still, most residents opposed allowing free blacks as permanent residents. Some settlers brought in slaves seasonally or as house servants. In , John A. Logan helped pass a law to prohibit all African Americans, including freedmen , from settling in the state. The winter of — is called the "Winter of the Deep Snow"; [37] a sudden, deep snowfall blanketed the state, making travel impossible for the rest of the winter, and many travelers perished.
Several severe winters followed, including the "Winter of the Sudden Freeze". On December 20, , a fast-moving cold front passed through, freezing puddles in minutes and killing many travelers who could not reach shelter. The adverse weather resulted in crop failures in the northern part of the state.
The southern part of the state shipped food north, and this may have contributed to its name, " Little Egypt ", after the Biblical story of Joseph in Egypt supplying grain to his brothers.
It represents the end of Indian resistance to white settlement in the Chicago region. The survivors were forced back to Iowa. Located in Hancock County along the Mississippi River, Nauvoo flourished and, by , briefly surpassed Chicago for the position of the state's largest city. Following a succession crisis , Brigham Young led most Latter Day Saints out of Illinois in a mass exodus to present-day Utah ; after close to six years of rapid development, Nauvoo quickly declined afterward.
After it was established in , Chicago gained prominence as a Great Lakes port, and then as an Illinois and Michigan Canal port after , and as a rail hub soon afterward. By , Chicago was Illinois's largest city.
In , after lobbying by Dorothea L. Dix , Illinois became one of the first states to establish a system of state-supported treatment of mental illness and disabilities, replacing local almshouses. Dix came into this effort after having met J. King, a Jacksonville, Illinois businessman, who invited her to Illinois, where he had been working to build an asylum for the insane. With the lobbying expertise of Dix, plans for the Jacksonville State Hospital now known as the Jacksonville Developmental Center were signed into law on March 1, Beginning with President Abraham Lincoln 's first call for troops and continuing throughout the war, Illinois mustered infantry regiments, which were numbered from the 7th to the th regiments.
Seventeen cavalry regiments were also gathered, as well as two light artillery regiments. During the Civil War, and more so afterwards, Chicago's population skyrocketed, which increased its prominence. The Pullman Strike and Haymarket Riot , in particular, greatly influenced the development of the American labor movement.
At the turn of the 20th century, Illinois had a population of nearly 5 million. Many people from other parts of the country were attracted to the state by employment caused by the expanding industrial base. By the end of the century, the population had reached The Century of Progress World's fair was held at Chicago in Illinois manufactured 6. Illinois had a prominent role in the emergence of the nuclear age. In , as part of the Manhattan Project , the University of Chicago conducted the first sustained nuclear chain reaction.
In , Argonne National Laboratory , near Chicago , activated the first experimental nuclear power generating system in the United States. By , the first privately financed nuclear plant in the United States, Dresden 1 , was dedicated near Morris. In , Fermilab , a national nuclear research facility near Batavia , opened a particle accelerator , which was the world's largest for over 40 years.
With eleven plants currently operating, Illinois leads all states in the amount of electricity generated from nuclear power. In , Illinois became the first state in the nation to adopt the recommendation of the American Law Institute and pass a comprehensive criminal code revision that repealed the law against sodomy. The code also abrogated common law crimes and established an age of consent of The first Farm Aid concert was held in Champaign to benefit American farmers, in The worst upper Mississippi River flood of the century, the Great Flood of , inundated many towns and thousands of acres of farmland.
On August 28, , Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner signed a bill into law that prohibited state and local police from arresting anyone solely due to their immigration status or due to federal detainers.
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