Feel the Illinois! 75 Interesting Facts About the Prairie State

Hello! Welcome to the Illinois presentation of Content Bash’s 50 Nifty States series. We’re going in alphabetical order and since Illinois is 13th on the list, we are more than a 25% through all 50! We started with Alabama and since then have done Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Georgia, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Kansas, and also other ones. We were able to find plenty about the Prairie State but Chicago is so significant that it merits its own section, being the third-largest city in the country after New York City and Los Angeles.

Beyond Chicagoland, what else is there to know about the Land of Lincoln? Read on to find out!

What is Illinois known for?

1. Sports teams! With the Chicago Bulls, Chicago Bears, Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, and Chicago Blackhawks, the city of Chicago hosts some of the most storied and popular franchises in the history of professional sports. Michael Jordan and his Bulls won six championships from 1991 to 1998 — while also becoming such a global phenomenon they made a significant cultural impact on music, fashion, and popular culture at large. The Chicago Bears won Super Bowl XX in 1985 with a team full of colorful personalities that achieved viral-like popularity with “The Super Bowl Shuffle.” The city’s passion for sports is big enough for two baseball teams: Chicago Cubs (who began in 1876) and the Chicago White Sox (who started in 1901). And in hockey, the Chicago Blackhawks have been skating since 1926 and have won six Stanley Cup championships — with three of them coming since 2009-10. The Chicago Sky of the WNBA won the championship in 2021.

2. The Sears Tower! It’s been officially called the Willis Tower since 2009 but people still call the Sears Tower. At 1,450 feet tall, the Willis/Sears Tower is the third-tallest building in the United States. When it was completed in 1974, it was the tallest building in the world. Now it’s not even the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere — that title went to the new One World Trade Center when it was completed in 2013.

3. Organized crime! America has a long and probably pretty unhealthy relationship with true crime content, and Chicago Outfit leader Alphonse Capone has given us plenty of content to fuel our obsession with mafia-related organized crime. In 1920, Prohibition went into effect and Al Capone exploited the country’s vulnerabilities to build the empire he’s curiously celebrated for today. If there is a singular event that encompasses the life of Al Capone, it’s probably the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre of 1929, which led to him being referred to as “Public Enemy Number One.”

4. Food! Chicago pizza and Chicago-style hot dogs are its own unique thing that’s well-known enough outside Illinois. The former is the subject of very heated debate among pizza lovers that has nothing to do with how delicious it is; deep-dish Chicago-style pizza is big like a casserole and has such a unique personality that it probably isn’t pizza. The former is served in a poppy-seed bun, usually with pickle slices, tomatoes, relish, onions, and mustard — but never ketchup! — and it’s so popular that as of at least the early 21st century, there were more hot dog places in Chicago than McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Burger King combined.

5. The Great Chicago Fire of 1871, which sadly ravished the city over three days in October when the O’Leary family’s barn caught on fire and the fire kept spreading over three square miles. The result was devastating: more than 100,000 Chicagoans were homeless and an estimate 300 people perished. Only a the structure of few buildings survived, including the Chicago Water Tower, St. Michael’s Church, and the Chicago Avenue Pumping Station. However, Chicago showed its strength and with the help of relief efforts from all over, the Windy City was able to rebuild and revitalize and rebound.

What are the official state symbols of Illinois?

6. The official state Poet Laureate position in Illinois was vacant for a few years but in 2020, Chicago-based celebrated award-winning writer and poet Angela Jackson was named to the position. She has been longlisted for the Pulitzer Prize and has also been a finalist for the PEN Open Book Award and you should buy her poetry collections More Than Meat and Raiment (2022) and It Seems Like a Mighty Long Time (2015).

7. There is an official state dance of Illinois and it is square dancing. This is very common among the 50 Nifty States, as square dancing is also the official state dance of Alabama and Arkansas and Colorado and Connecticut and Idaho and Louisiana and Maryland and Massachusetts and Mississippi and and Missouri. And also Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Oregon, as well as Tennessee and Texas. And Utah. And Virginia. And also Washington state. It’s also the official folk dance of California, New Jersey, and South Carolina. 

8. Seven of the 50 Nifty States (including Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia, and West Virginia) have selected the lush lovely red Northern Cardinal as their official state bird. Illinois was the first of the states to do so — again, the cool kids voted and made it so ordered — in 1929.

9. Have you ever wondered what the official state amphibian of Illinois is? Even if you haven’t, we will tell you anyway. It’s the eastern tiger salamander! This decision was the result of the citizens of Illinois voting in 2004.

10. The kids of Illinois have been doing these votes for a very long time. In 1908, they selected the violet as the official state flower of Illinois, just like New Jersey and Rhode Island. Here is a picture of it!

11. While the Illinois schoolchildren voted on the official state flower in 1908, they also made the native oak the official state tree. Since there are many different kinds of native trees, that wasn’t really good enough so in 1973, the kids voted again on what specific kind of oak should be chosen, and the winner was the white oak.

12. In 1980, all the cool kids of Indiana voted the white-tailed deer to be official state mammal of Illinois. It’s also a state symbol for Arkansas, Michigan, Mississippi, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Wisconsin.

13. The cool kids continue to make decisions on the best official symbols for Illinois. In 1986, they voted the bluegill as the official Illinois state fish.

14. In 1975, all the cool 3rd-grade kids in Decatur, Illinois declared the monarch butterfly to be the official state butterfly of Illinois. The well-known butterfly is also a state symbol for Alabama, Idaho, Texas, Minnesota, West Virginia, and Vermont.

15. In 2007, elementary schoolchildren in Woodlawn, Illinois convinced everyone that the Gold Rush apple should be the official state fruit.

16. Perhaps going overboard at this point, kids at a elementary school in Joliet, Illinois successfully lobbied for popcorn to be declared the official snack food of Illinois in 2003.

17. In 2004, the kids finally let the rest of the state in on the fun. The painted turtle was voted the official state reptile of Illinois by citizens of the state, joining Colorado, Michigan, and Vermont.

18. Here is what the state flag of Illinois looks like! It’s actually the second flag they’ve had in its history. The original one was adopted in 1915 and was pretty similar to what you see below — except the state name did not appear on the bottom. One dude in Vietnam got tired of explaining to everyone what kind of flag it was so he successfully campaigned to make the next design more obvious. Florence Hutchison of Greenfield, Illinois submitted a version that added new details, and the new state flag with the “Illinois” name prominently displayed on the bottom. Admittedly, the white flag on the white background is not helping.

19. The official state fossil of Illinois is the Tully monster, named for amateur fossil collector Francis Tully who made the first discovery in the Mazon Creek in Illinois in 1958. The Tully monster is a weird-looking extinct soft-bodied bilaterian that lived in muddy costal waters during the Pennsylvanian geological period like 300 million years ago. We really don’t know much about the Tully monster even now, more than 60 years after its discovery so imagine how they must’ve felt in 1958.

20. The state song of Illinois is simply titled “Illinois,” with lyrics by Charles H. Chamberlain and music by Archibald Johnston. Strangely, Archibald Johnston wrote the music in 1870, more than two decades before Charles Chamberlain wrote the lyrics in 1893. Here is the University of Illinois Women’s Glee Club singing the state song, with help from the Men’s Glee Club.

Timeline of early Illinois history state facts

21. The land we know as Illinois was actually underwater and close to the Equator during the Paleozoic Era that was like 250 to 540 million years ago. Illinois has changed since then! Once the Pleistocene Epoch — which is more popularly known as the Ice Age — started 2.5 million years ago, Illinois was pretty much covered with humongous sheets of ice. The basin of Lake Michigan is basically the result of the Ice Age.

22. Humans have been living in modern-day Illinois for at least 10,000 years. The first Native American tribes that we know about who lived on Illinois land included the Illiniwek, which is how Illinois got its name.

23. In 1673, the French explorers Louis Jolliet and his pal Jacques Marquette explored what we now know as the Illinois River. The Jesuit missionary Marquette founded a mission nearby.

24. A few years later in 1680, another team of French colonizing buddies named Henri de Tonti, Sieur de La Salle, and René-Robert Cavelier planted their metaphorical flags in what’s now known as Peoria.

25. The French ruled Illinois for awhile as part of New France until they lost to the British in the Seven Years’ War — which took place 1756 to 1763 and is sometimes call the French and Indian War — because the British are just better at colonizing I guess.

26. A few of the French lingered behind in settlements and a few British moved in and Illinois became part of the British Province of Quebec for awhile.

27. Then in 1778 during the Revolutionary War, this dude George Roger Clark started taking over Illinois towns like Kaskaskia and Vincennes. This is known as the Illinois Campaign, and it was crucial to defeating the British. Clark had also declared Illinois as part of Virginia, but it didn’t quite shake out that way in the long run.

28. When King George III and the United States signed the Treaty of Paris in 1783 and ended the American Revolutionary War, the land that includes Illinois was ceded to the United States.

29. In 1787, the Northwest Territory was established, and included Illinois as well as Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, and some of Minnesota.

30. On February 3, 1809, the Illinois Territory was created.

31. Illinois was admitted to the Union on December 3, 1818 — it was the 21st of the 50 Nifty States to do so.

32. On February 1, 1865, Illinois became the first state to ratify the 13th Amendment — which abolished slavery — to the Constitution

Topography & geography of Illinois

33. Chicago gets all of the love and attention but the capital of Illinois is actually Springfield. It wasn’t always the capital, though. From 1809 to 1819, the capital of Illinois was Kaskaskia, and from 1819 to 1839, the capital of Illinois was Vandalia.

34. The Illinois border is mostly rivers. The entire length of the western border of Illinois is the Mississippi River. The Mississippi River meets the Ohio River in Cario, where the Ohio River outlines the southern border of Illinois. The Ohio River is also the location of the mouth of the Wabash River, which also outlines the eastern border of Illinois.

35. The highest point in the state of Illinois is Charles Mound, which is 1,235 feet above sea level.

36. Illinois can be divided into three regions: The Central Plains, the Shawnee Hills, and the Gulf Coastal Plain.

37. If you ever want to be at the lowest point in Illinois, go to the confluence of the Mississippi River and Ohio River near the town of Cario. That’s just 279 feet above sea level.

38. Illinois is bordered by five states: Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky, Wisconsin, and Indiana.

39. Nature lovers will absolutely love the great outdoors of Illinois. There are no less than 309 state parks and recreational sites spread out across the state Illinois on no less than 475,000 acres. Here is a handy map of all of them!

40. There are 102 counties in the state of Illinois. Cook County — which includes Chicago — has the most people. McLean County is the largest in terms of land, covering almost 1,200 square miles.

41. At nearly 58,000 square miles, Illinois is 25th among the 50 Nifty United States in size.

42. Roughly 2,325 square miles of Illinois is water, with Lake Michigan taking up a big percentage of that.

43. If you wanted to drive the entire length of Illinois from north to south, that trip would be 390 miles. If you were to drive the width of the state from east to west, that would be 210 miles.

What are cool places to visit in Illinois?

44. The city of Metropolis, Illinois has a natural affection for a certain caped crusader who was born in a certain fictional town with the same name. The Superman statue in Superman Square on Market Street by the Massac County Courthouse has been erect since 1993, and the 15-feet-tall behemoth is a popular selfie destination.

45. That big shiny kidney bean you see at Millennium Park in the Loop of Chicago is called Cloud Gate. Created by sculpture artist Anish Kapoor, visiting Cloud Gate is an interactive experience you can touch and feel, and watching the reflection of the Chicago skyline distort itself is also a reflection of how enjoyable and engaging public art can be for a city.

46. The Lincoln Park Zoo was founded in 1868 and it’s the fourth-oldest zoo in the United States. The first animal they bought was a bear cub. It came from the Philadelphia Zoo and it costed ten bucks.

47. The Rockford Peaches played in Rockford, Illinois in the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League from 1943 to 1954, and they are the team the film A League of Their Own was based on. They played their games at Beyer Stadium in Rockford and the place has been preserved and revamped. You can visit it today!

48. Next to the New York Philharmonic that was established in 1842, the Belleville Philharmonic Society in Belleville, Illinois is the second-oldest orchestra in the United States that is still continuously operating. It was founded in 1866, and they still play all over the town of Belleville.

49. If one good thing came out of the tragic Great Chicago Fire of 1871, it could be the Chicago Public Library. A couple of thoughtful people in London thought the English should donate a shitload of books to Chicago and that basically resulted in the 9th-largest public library in the country. And since libraries are nice and cool, the Chicago Public Library became the biggest to ban overdue fines in 2019.

50. The Shedd Aquarium in Chicago opened in 1930 and for awhile, it was the largest indoor facility in the entire world. It also happens to be the first inland aquarium that featured a permanent saltwater collection. It’s one of the more popular attractions in Chicago in terms of visitors and if you like fishes and sharks and dolphins, you should visit it, too.

51. The Art Institute of Chicago is nothing short of stunning. Founded in Grant Park in 1879, the collection here is one of the strongest and deepest in the world. Their greatest hits include Pablo Picasso’s The Old Guitarist, Mary Cassatt’s The Child’s Bath, and Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, as well as more than 30 paintings by Claude Monet. Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, Cy Twombly, Paul Cézanne, and Cindy Sherman — and tons more. An absolute embarrassment of artistic riches.

Cool, weird & fun facts about Illinois

52. The Illinois soil is very fertile and extremely rich. The dirt is considered to be perhaps Illinois’s greatest natural resource and like 75% of the state is farmland. It’s a big reason why they grow a lot of soybeans, corn, pumpkins, and apples. In fact, Illinois produces more soybeans than any other state, and at least 90% of pumpkins in the United States are grown in Illinois.

53. You know those tall dome things you see on farms? Those are called silos. They were invented on a farm in Spring Grove, Illinois by a guy named Fred Hatch in 1873.

54. Twinkies were invented in Illinois! It’s true. In 1930, a dude named James Alexander Dewar made the very first batch in Schiller Park, Illinois, after he realized the cream-filling-making machine used to make strawberry shortcakes weren’t being used with strawberries were not in season. Almost a century’s worth of stoners have paid unknowing tribute to Mr. Dewar ever since.

55. One time they reversed the flow of the Chicago River and made it go backwards. At one point in the later part of the 19th century, Lake Michigan — the source of Chicago’s drinking water — was infested with pollutants that led to illnesses that came from the polluted Chicago River that emptied into the lake. So then they got the bright idea to reverse the Chicago River so that it would eventually flow into the Mississippi River. It took 8 years but it totally fucking worked. The folks at the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) even called it a “Civil Engineering Monument of the Millennium.”

56. The world’s largest flipper pinball machine is located at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. But it’s not the kind of playable pinball machine that you’re probably thinking of we find in arcades and bars. The Swiss Jolly Ball is a seven-feet-high and 15-feet-wide machine with a pinball is a nifty feet of engineering that we can watch take many twists and turns in a hodgepodge diorama.

57. In 1940, the first Dairy Queen opened in Joliet, Illinois. The Peanut Buster Parfait wouldn’t come along for another 30 years tho.

58. After he ripped off the McDonald brothers in California, Ray Kroc opened his first McDonald’s in Des Plaines, Illinois on April 15, 1955.

59. The Second City improvisational comedy theater troupe was founded in Chicago in 1959 and has since become a training ground for dozens of some of the most successful comedians in show business and funniest people of the last few decades: John Candy, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Chris Farely, Catherine O’Hara, Tina Fey, Jordan Peele, Kate McKinnon, and Dan Aykroyd.

60. The concept of the ice cream sundae has its origins in Two Rivers, Wisconsin in 1881, but it wasn’t until Garwood’s Drugstore in Evanston, Illinois started calling it a “sundae” to flaunt town laws about serving sodas on the day of Sabbath. It was against the law to have ice cream sodas on Sundays, but ice cream with syrup was perfectly fine, and that’s why we call it a sundae.

61. If you ever visit the town of Morton, Illinois, they have claimed to be the Pumpkin Capital of the World since 1978. They’ve held the annual Morton Pumpkin Festival since 1967.

62. The first Farm Aid took place at Memorial Stadium in Champaign, Illinois in September 1985. The event was put together by Willie Nelson, Neil Young, and John Mellencamp, and brought awareness to the struggles of American farmers while raising over $9 million for their cause. The star-studded lineup of musicians included Lou Reed, Roy Orbison, George Jones, Queen, Joni Mitchell, Johnny Cash, and dozens of other iconic rock-n-roll stars.

63. Speaking of Champaign, “Champaign, Illinois” is a pretty good song by Old 97’s.

64. And speaking of music, Sufjan Stevens’s 2005 record Illinoise was one of the big indie rock hipster darlings that year. Lyrically, there are many references and themes to Illinois-related things, including the name-dropping of plenty of cities and location throughout the state. It was supposedly part of a concept project covering all 50 states, but Sufjan never got further than Illinoise and 2003’s Michigan and has said the idea was a just a joke anyway. Content Bash is serious tho!

What famous people are from Illinois?

65. Perhaps no American writer of the 20th century was more influential than Ernest Miller Hemingway, author of such literary classics like The Old Man and the Sea and For Whom the Bell Tolls. Known for his sparse and direct prose as much as his explorations of masculinity as a complex struggle between vulnerability and toughness.

Click on the old man to purchase The Old Man and the Sea!

66. Illinois is often referred to as the Land of Lincoln, and that’s because of President Abraham Lincoln’s extremely strong ties to the state. Abraham Lincoln was born in Larue County, Kentucky on February 12, 1809 but he moved to Illinois in March 1830. It was here in this state where Abraham Lincoln planted his roots and a few years later in 1834, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives to represent the 7th district of Illinois.

67. Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States, was born in Hawaii but also has very strong ties to Illinois.

68. Former United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was born in Chicago in 1947.

69. Former First Lady Michelle Obama was also born in Chicago in in 1964.

70. Walt Disney was born in Chicago! His family moved to a farm in Marceline, Missouri when he was just 4 years old though.

71. Rock-n-roll band Cheap Trick originated in 1973 in Rockford, Illinois. The power-pop maestros that penned powerhouses like “Surrender” and “I Want You to Want Me” were inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016.

72. Harrison Ford, the handsome bastard who played Indiana Jones and Han Solo, was born in Chicago. Robin Williams — the funny guy that was in Mrs. Doubtfire and The Birdcage and not the graphic designer — was also born in Chicago.

73. Moviemaker Michael Mann has been making some of the best American movies since his directorial debut with Thief, including Heat and Miami Vice and The Last of the Mohicans. He was born in Chicago on February 5, 1943.

74. The tallest person in the world at one point was this dude named Robert Pershing Wadlow, who stood an astonishing 8’11” tall. That’s almost nine feet! Robert Wadlow was born in Alton, Illinois, and was something of a celebrity while touring as part of the Ringling Brothers Circus in the 1930s.

75. Philip K. Dick was born on December 16, 1928, in Chicago, Illinois. He was an American science fiction writer celebrated for his exploration of reality, identity, and authoritarianism in a world often distorted by technology and altered states of mind. His works, including Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, The Man in the High Castle, and A Scanner Darkly, pushed the boundaries of science fiction and inspired countless adaptations and reinterpretations in film and literature.

Click on the sheep to buy Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Cover Image Credit: Image by David Mark from Pixabay

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