Illinois

Country

United States

Continent

North America

Best Cities to Visit

Chicago
Springfield
Peoria
Galena
Lake Forest

Size

149,997 KM²

Population

2,812,508

Spending Budget

$831 - $9,961

Famous For

Millennium Park
Navy Pier
Field Museum
The Art Institute of Chicago

Best Time to Visit

April
May
June
July
August

History

During the early part of the Paleozoic Era, the area that would become Illinois was submerged beneath a shallow sea and located near the Equator. Diverse marine life lived at this time, including trilobites, brachiopods, and crinoids. Changing environmental conditions led to the formation of large coal swamps in the Carboniferous. Illinois was above sea level for at least part of the Mesozoic, but by its end was again submerged by the Western Interior Seaway. The Eocene Epoch preceded this. During the Pleistocene Epoch, vast ice sheets covered much of Illinois, with only the Driftless Area remaining exposed. These glaciers carved the basin of Lake Michigan and left behind traces of ancient glacial lakes and moraines. 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 7,000 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 100 platform and burial mounds, a 50-acre (20 ha) plaza larger than 35 football fields, 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 100 feet (30 m) high, 951 feet (290 m) long, 836 feet (255 m) wide, and covers 13.8 acres (5.6 ha). It contains about 814,000 cubic yards (622,000 m3) of earth. A structure topped it thought to have measured about 105 feet (32 m) in length and 48 feet (15 m) in width, covered an area of 5,000 square feet (460 m2), and been as much as 50 feet (15 m) high, making its peak 150 feet (46 m) above the level of the plaza. 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 20,000 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.

Present Day

Illinois is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It has the fifth-largest gross domestic product (GDP), the sixth largest population, and the 25th largest land area of all U.S. states. Illinois has been noted as a microcosm of the entire United States. With Chicago in northeastern Illinois, small industrial cities and immense agricultural productivity in the north and center of the state, and natural resources such as coal, timber, and petroleum in the south, Illinois has a diverse economic base and is a major transportation hub. The Port of Chicago connects the state to international ports via two main routes: from the Great Lakes, via the Saint Lawrence Seaway, to the Atlantic Ocean, and from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River, via the Illinois River, through the Illinois Waterway. The Mississippi River, the Ohio River, and the Wabash River form parts of the boundaries of Illinois. For decades, Chicago's O'Hare International Airport has been ranked as one of the world's busiest airports. Illinois has long had a reputation as a bellwether both in social and cultural terms and, through the 1980s, in politics. The capital of Illinois is Springfield, which is located in the central part of the state. Although today Illinois's largest population center is in its northeast, the state's European population grew first in the west as the French settled lands near the Mississippi River, when the region was known as Illinois Country and was part of New France. Following the American Revolutionary War, American settlers began arriving from Kentucky in the 1780s via the Ohio River, and the population grew from south to north. In 1818, Illinois achieved statehood. Following increased commercial activity in the Great Lakes after the construction of the Erie Canal, Chicago was incorporated in the 1830s on the banks of the Chicago River at one of the few natural harbors on the southern section of Lake Michigan.

Future

Through the Center for Illinois' Future, BCG's Chicago office is investing its proven expertise to help organizations drive positive social change in Chicago and throughout Illinois. Over the past decade, BCG has worked with more than 70 social impact and public sector organizations throughout Illinois across a wide variety of social issues. We’ve also invested approximately $75 million in Illinois-based organizations—and our ongoing commitment to improving the lives of the people of Illinois is stronger than ever. BCG has worked with a wide range of social impact and public sector organizations throughout Chicago and Illinois. We’ve been privileged to work with the City of Chicago, the University of Chicago Urban Labs, Advance Illinois, Northwestern University, The Field Museum, the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, the Latino Policy Forum, and many other outstanding organizations. In the late 19th century, Illinois was the fastest-growing state in the nation. Twenty-seven million worldwide were dazzled by the White City on Chicago’s lakefront, the 1893 World Columbian Exposition. We had some swagger then, and maybe so up to the postwar period of my childhood, as synergies between City and fertile countryside made our state one of the richest. But now, we’re in a funk.

Must Visit Places ------------

Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum

The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is situated in Springfield and offers a great opportunity to learn about Abraham Lincoln and Illinois and its history. Officially opened in 2004, the museum's collection has been a work in progress for at least a century. The facility is also used for research, and not all of the collection is available for public viewing. The museum contains life-size dioramas of Lincoln's boyhood home, areas of the White House, the presidential box at Ford's Theatre, and the settings of key events in Lincoln's life and pictures, artifacts, and other memorabilia. Original artifacts are changed from time to time. Still, the collection usually includes items like the original handwritten Gettysburg Address, a signed Emancipation Proclamation, his glasses and shaving mirror, Mary Todd Lincoln's music box, items from her White House china, her wedding dress, and more. The permanent exhibits are divided into two different stages of the president's life, called "Journey One: The Pre-Presidential Years" and "Journey Two: The Presidential Years," and a third, the "Treasures Gallery." Temporary exhibits rotate periodically. Past exhibits have dealt with the Civil War and Stephen A. Douglas. As of February 2014, a collection of Annie Leibovitz's photography, including photos of Lincoln's items, is on display

Chicago’s Magnificent Mile

The Magnificent Mile on Michigan Avenue is a must for any visitors to the Windy City. The Mile offers a selection of shopping ranging from exclusive boutiques to high street shops. There is also a selection of museums, live entertainment, hotels, restaurants, Magnificent Mile, and several famous buildings such as Trump Tower and the Wrigley Building. Real estate developer Arthur Rubloff of Rubloff Company gave the district its nickname in the 1940s. Chicago's largest shopping district, various mid-range and high-end shops line this section of the street; approximately 3.1 million square feet (290,000 m2) are occupied by retail, restaurants, museums, and hotels. To date, rent on The Magnificent Mile is eighth-most expensive in the United States, behind Fifth Avenue in New York and Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. In addition, there are many tall buildings, such as 875 North Michigan Avenue (formerly the "John Hancock Center"), in the district. Landmarks along the Magnificent Mile include Wrigley Building, Tribune Tower, the Chicago Water Tower, and the Allerton, Drake, and Intercontinental Hotels.

Starved Rock State Park

Starved Rock State Park is a state park in the U.S. state of Illinois, characterized by the many canyons within its 2,630 acres (1,064 ha). Located just southeast of the village of Utica, in Deer Park Township, LaSalle County, Illinois, along the south bank of the Illinois River, the park hosts over two million visitors annually, the most for any Illinois state park. Before European contact, the area was home to Native Americans, particularly the Kaskaskia, who lived in the Grand Village of Illinois across the river. Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette were the first Europeans recorded as exploring the region. By 1683, the French had established Fort St. Louis on a large sandstone butte overlooking the river they called Le Rocher (the Rock). Later after the French had moved on, according to a local legend, a group of Native Americans of the Illinois Confederation (also called Illiniwek or Illini) pursued by the Ottawa and Potawatomi fled to the butte in the late 18th century. In the legend, around 1769, the Ottawa and Potawatomi besieged the butte until all of the Illiniwek had starved, and the butte became known as "Starved Rock." The area around The Rock was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960. In addition, the park region has been the subject of several archeological studies concerning both native and European settlements, and various other archeological sites associated with the park were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1998.

Navy Pier

Navy Pier is a 3,300-foot-long (1,010 m) pier on the shoreline of Lake Michigan, located in the Streeterville neighborhood of the Near North Side community area in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Navy Pier encompasses over 50 acres (20 ha) of parks, gardens, shops, restaurants, family attractions, and exhibition facilities. He is one of the top destinations in the Midwestern United States, drawing nearly two million visitors annually. It is one of the most visited attractions in the entire Midwest and is Chicago's second most visited tourist attraction. Navy Pier opened to the public on July 15, 1916. Originally known as the "Municipal Pier," the pier was built by Charles Sumner Frost, a nationally known architect, with a design based on the 1909 Plan of Chicago by Daniel Burnham and Edward H. Bennett; its original purpose was to serve as a dock for freights, passenger traffic, and indoor and outdoor recreation; events like expositions and pageants were held there. In mid-1918, the pier was also used as a jail for draft dodgers. Finally, in 1927, the pier was renamed Navy Pier to honor the naval veterans who served in World War I. In 1941, during World War II, the pier became a training center for the United States Navy; about 10,000 people worked, trained, and lived there. In addition, the pier contained a 2,500-seat theater, gym, 12-chair barber shop, tailor, cobbler shops, soda fountain, and a vast kitchen and hospital.

Art Institute of Chicago

The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the United States. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 million people annually. Its collection, stewarded by 11 curatorial departments, is encyclopedic and includes iconic works such as Georges Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, Pablo Picasso's The Old Guitarist, Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, and Grant Wood's American Gothic. More than 30 special exhibitions augment its permanent collection of nearly 300,000 works of art mounted yearly that illuminate aspects of the collection and present cutting-edge curatorial and scientific research. As a research institution, the Art Institute also has a conservation and conservation science department, five conservation laboratories, and one of the country's largest art history and architecture libraries—the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries. The collection's growth has warranted several additions to the museum's 1893 building, which was constructed for the World's Columbian Exposition. The most recent expansion, the Modern Wing designed by Renzo Piano, opened in 2009 and increased the museum's footprint to nearly one million square feet, making it the second-largest art museum in the United States, after the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Willis Tower

The Willis Tower is a 108-story, 1,450-foot (442.1 m) skyscraper in Chicago. The tower has 108 stories as counted by standard methods, though the building's owners count the main roof as 109 and the mechanical penthouse roof as 110. At completion in 1974, it surpassed the World Trade Center in New York City to become the tallest building in the world, a title that it held for nearly 25 years; it was also the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere for 41 years until the new One World Trade Center surpassed it in 2013. Willis Tower is considered a seminal achievement for engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan. It is currently the third-tallest building in the United States and the Western hemisphere – and the 23rd-tallest in the world. Each year, more than one million people visit its observation deck, the highest in the United States, making it one of Chicago's most popular tourist destinations. The structure was renamed in 2009 by the Willis Group as a term of its lease. As of April 2018, the building's largest tenant is United Airlines, which moved its corporate headquarters from 77 West Wacker Drive (then the United Building) in 2012, occupying around 20 floors.

Field Museum of Natural History

The Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH), also known as The Field Museum, is a natural history museum in Chicago, Illinois, and is one of the largest such museums in the world. The museum maintains its status as a premier natural history museum through the size and quality of its educational and scientific programs and its extensive scientific specimen and artifact collections. The diverse, high-quality permanent exhibitions, which attract up to two million visitors annually, range from the earliest fossils to past and current cultures worldwide to interactive programming demonstrating today's urgent conservation needs. The museum is named in honor of its first major benefactor, the department-store magnate Marshall Field. The museum and its collections originated from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition and the artifacts displayed at the fair. The museum maintains a temporary exhibition program of traveling shows as well as in-house-produced topical exhibitions. The professional staff maintains collections of over 24 million specimens and objects that provide the basis for the museum’s scientific research programs. These collections include the full range of existing biodiversity, gems, meteorites, fossils, and rich anthropological collections and cultural artifacts from around the globe.

Dana-Thomas House

The Dana–Thomas House (also known as the Susan Lawrence Dana House and Dana House) is a Prairie School style designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Built 1902–04 for patron Susan Lawrence Dana, it is located along East Lawrence Avenue in Springfield, Illinois. The home reflects the mutual affection of the patron and the architect for organic architecture, the relatively flat landscape of the U.S. state of Illinois, and the Japanese aesthetic as expressed in Japanese prints. Susan Lawrence Dana (1862–1946) was an independent-minded woman and heiress to a substantial fortune, including silver mines in the Rocky Mountains. Widowed in 1900, Dana enjoyed complete control over her household and fortune. Eager to express her personality and become a leading philanthropic figure in Springfield, Dana decided to completely remodel her family's Italianate mansion located in the state capital's fashionable "Aristocracy Hill" neighborhood.

Lincoln Park

Linkin Park is an American rock band from Agoura Hills, California. The band's current lineup comprises vocalist/rhythm guitarist/keyboardist Mike Shinoda, lead guitarist Brad Delson, bassist Dave Farrell, DJ/turntablist Joe Hahn, and drummer Rob Bourdon, all of whom are founding members. Vocalists Mark Wakefield and Chester Bennington are former members of the band. Categorized as alternative rock, Linkin Park's earlier music spanned a fusion of heavy metal and hip hop, while they later transitioned into more electronica- and pop-influenced music. Formed in 1996, Linkin Park rose to international fame with their debut studio album, Hybrid Theory (2000), which became certified Diamond by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Released during the peak of the nu-metal scene, the album's singles' heavy airplay on MTV led the singles "One Step Closer," "Crawling," and "In the End" all to chart highly on the Mainstream Rock chart; the latter crossed over to the pop chart. Their second album, Meteora (2003), continued the band's success. The band explored experimental sounds on their third album, Minutes to Midnight (2007). By the end of the decade, Linkin Park was among the most successful and popular rock acts.

Shedd Aquarium

Shedd Aquarium (formally the John G. Shedd Aquarium) is an indoor public aquarium in Chicago, Illinois, in the United States. Opened on May 30, 1930, the 5 million US gal (19,000,000 l; 4,200,000 imp gal) aquarium was for some time the largest indoor facility in the world. Today it holds about 32,000 animals. Shedd Aquarium was the first inland aquarium with a permanent saltwater fish collection. It is located on Lake Michigan, on the Museum Campus Chicago, along with the Adler Planetarium and the Field Museum of Natural History. In 2015, the aquarium had 2.02 million visitors. It was the most visited aquarium in the U.S. in 2005, and in 2007, it surpassed the Field Museum as the most popular cultural attraction in Chicago. The aquarium contains 1,500 species, including fish, marine mammals, birds, snakes, amphibians, and insects. The aquarium received awards for "best exhibit" from the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA) for Seahorse Symphony in 1999, Amazon Rising in 2001, and Wild Reef in 2004. In addition, it was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1987.