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Nearly everything in Illinois revolves around Chicago , the largest and most exciting of the Great Lakes cities. At the state's northeastern corner, on the shores of Lake Michigan , Chicago has a skyline to rival any city's, plus a gamut of top-rated museums, restaurants and cafés, 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 centre, 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 state capital, Springfield, 200 miles (322km) south of Chicago, is a city with a small-town atmosphere, revelling in its fame as having being the home of Abraham Lincoln, the 16th US President, who practised law here and was laid to rest in the local Oak Ridge Cemetery after his assassination. Visitors seeking life in the open air are drawn to the expanse of natural beauty in south Illinois where the Shawnee National Forest offers hiking, biking, camping, and fishing opportunities in serene woodlands. 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 head 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. Granted statehood in 1818, Illinois remained a distant frontier until the mid-1830s when, after a series of uprisings, the native Sauk were subjugated and settlers began to arrive in sizable 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. |
