Illinois: The Beating Heart of the Midwest

The State of Illinois is one of the Midwest's most popular destinations. With its centralized location, it could be said to be the beating heart of the entire Midwest region. This has served to make Illinois one of the nation's more important travel and shipping hubs, for it enjoys ports on the Mississippi River as well as Lake Michigan, thus connecting two of North America's busiest inland shipping routes.

Like many American states and places, Illinois gets its name from the Native American tribes who dwelt in the area. Long before the state entered the Union in 1818 and even before its exploration by French settlers in the seventeenth century, Illinois was an important area. Southern Illinois housed the pre-Columbian city of Cahokia, which housed an estimated peak population in the 30,000 to 40,000 range.

Illinois' nicknames of The Land of Lincoln and, alternatively, The Prairie State, provide hints regarding its history. Three U.S. presidents have been elected from Illinois: Barack Obama, Ulysses S. Grant and, of course, the esteemed Abraham Lincoln. Contrary to the state's other nickname, Illinois is not all prairie, but instead lies at the beginning of it.

Illinois's size of roughly 58,000 square miles belies its population and importance. It is quite average in terms of area but houses a population of almost 13 million, which makes Illinois the Midwest's most populous state by a large margin and the fifth most populous state in the U.S.

The state's legislative capital of Springfield is surpassed in size by its economic hub of Chicago. As an important Great Lakes port, Chicago and the surrounding northeastern section of Illinois house approximately 62 percent of the state's population. Even with the advent of the airplane and the accompanying decline of rail travel, Illinois has remained an important transportation center. Chicago O'Hare International Airport is one of the busiest in the world.

Not surprisingly, the Chicago area is the location of many of Illinois's most well-known attractions. As one of the most populous cities in the country, it houses numerous sports franchises, museums, and universities. It has the Bears in the NFL, the Blackhawks in the NHL, and its Chicago Bulls basketball franchise is one of the most well-known teams in the NBA. Baseball is especially well represented; Chicago is home to the White Sox of the American League as well as the Cubs of the National League, whose historic home base of Wrigley field is the second oldest major league stadium in the U.S.

Illinois contains three universities ranked in the nation's top 100. These include the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and two others in Chicago. The University of Chicago has been rated number eight by the U.S. News & World Report and Northwestern University, renowned for its music program, is twelfth.