Illinois: Basic Facts and State Overview

Illinois is the sixth most populous state with 12.6 million residents and 57,914 square miles — the most populous state in the Midwest and the home of Chicago, the third-largest city in the US.

Capital and Major Cities
Springfield is the capital (114,000). Chicago is the largest city (2.7 million; metro 9.5 million), the third-largest US city after New York and Los Angeles. Other major cities: Aurora (180,000), Joliet (150,000), Rockford (145,000), and Naperville (150,000).

Nickname and Motto
Illinois is "The Land of Lincoln" — Abraham Lincoln lived in Springfield from 1837 to 1861 and is buried there. The state motto is "State Sovereignty, National Union." The state flower is the violet; the state bird is the northern cardinal.

Geography
Illinois is predominantly flat — the glaciers of the Pleistocene epoch leveled most of the state, leaving deep, rich loam soils across the central plains (the Illinois Till Plain). The Mississippi River forms the western border; the Ohio River forms the southern border. The Shawnee Hills in the far south are the only significant topographic relief outside the Chicago lakefront.

Economy
Illinois has a highly diversified economy: financial services (Chicago is the world's center for futures and derivatives trading — the CME Group and CBOE operate here), manufacturing (food processing, metals, chemicals), agriculture (corn and soybeans dominate the central plains), and healthcare. Illinois is the headquarters state for Boeing (recently relocated), McDonald's, Caterpillar, Deere & Company, Abbott, United Airlines, and many Fortune 500 companies.

Notable Facts
Chicago's architectural legacy includes the world's first skyscraper (the Home Insurance Building, 1885), the innovative Prairie School architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright, and some of the finest mid-century modernist buildings in the world (Mies van der Rohe's work at IIT and the Federal Center).