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ILLINOIS
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 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
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.
Other early immigrants included the young Abraham
Lincoln, who practiced law from 1837 onward in
Springfield, the state capital and home of a wide
range of Lincolniana, including his restored home,
his law offices and vari ous 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 claim important
roles in the making of the sixteenth US president.
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