Illinois

F

Music

Chicago has long been the focus of musical activity in Illinois and the Midwest. Monthly concerts occurred in Chicago in the 1830s, and choral music and opera were popular in the city as early as the 1850s. In the second half of the 19th century appreciative Chicago audiences attracted many touring orchestras from the East. One visiting conductor, Theodore Thomas, so impressed a group of wealthy Chicagoans that they organized the Chicago Orchestra, now the famous Chicago Symphony Orchestra, for him in 1891. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra produces a summer concert series, featuring guest conductors, at the Ravinia Festival on the North Shore in suburban Highland Park.

The Chicago Grand Opera Company, which included the famous soprano Mary Garden among its first members, came into existence in 1910. Successors were the Chicago Opera Association and later the Chicago Civic Opera Company. The Great Depression of the 1930s forced the Civic Opera to disband, but grand opera returned to the city in 1954 when the Lyric Opera of Chicago made its debut. Today the Lyric thrives with fall, winter, and spring series at the Civic Opera House in downtown Chicago.

Music clubs and societies in many parts of Illinois sponsor community orchestras and choirs. The Illinois Symphony Orchestra, for instance, was formed in the mid-1980s to produce classical music in central Illinois. Many universities and colleges have extensive musical programs.

Chicago gained a considerable reputation for fostering jazz, blues, and folk music in the 20th century. The city is most notably a mecca for the blues, producing some of its most well known musicians as well as influencing its sound. The blues originated in the early 1800s with Southern plantation slave workers. By the early 1920s Mississippi Delta blues musicians were migrating north to Chicago, which was burgeoning with music clubs and recording studios. Chicago became a testing ground for the blues sound. Each year the Chicago Blues Festival draws musicians and music lovers for a four-day event celebrating Chicago as the Blues Capital of the World. Meanwhile, the city’s blues clubs draw performers year around.

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VI

Recreation and Places of Interest

Illinois’s parks and forests offer varied opportunities for outdoor recreation. Many miles of abandoned railroad right-of-way, both urban and rural, have become improved hiking and biking trails. Sandy beaches along Lake Michigan provide attractions for swimming and other water-oriented sports. The state’s long, cold winters and abundant snow in its northern sections make winter sports such as ice skating and skiing popular.

Abraham Lincoln, the 16th United States president, is honored throughout Illinois with parks, memorials, and other sites. The state’s automobile license plates even proclaim Illinois as the Land of Lincoln. The Lincoln Heritage Trail, established in 1963, joins many of these sites. Stretching 1,598 km (993 mi), the trail traces the path followed by the Lincoln family from Kentucky, through Indiana, and into Illinois. Included among the Lincoln sites is the Lincoln Home National Historic Site in Springfield, the only home America’s Civil War president ever owned. His residence for 17 years, the home contains many period pieces owned at one time by the Lincoln family.

Lincoln’s Springfield home is the sole Illinois site under the administration of the National Park Service. The service does, however, have an oversight interest in both the Illinois and Michigan National Heritage Corridor, which encompasses the former canal route between Chicago and LaSalle-Peru, and in the Chicago Portage National Historic Site, which marks (in suburban Lyons) the approximate place where early travelers portaged their light watercraft between the Great Lakes and Mississippi drainage basins.

A

National and State Forests

Shawnee National Forest, the only national forest in the state, covers 109,000 hectares (270,000 acres) of wooded hill country in southernmost Illinois. Within the forest are facilities for picnicking, camping, hiking, horseback riding, hunting, fishing, boating, and swimming. The five state forests all offer hiking opportunities, and four provide camping facilities.

B

State Parks

The State of Illinois administers 73 state parks and two state marinas. The largest park is Pere Marquette State Park, which covers 3,200 hectares (8,000 acres) of wooded country near the junction of the Illinois and Mississippi rivers. Part of the palisades, or cliffs, that rise above the Mississippi River lie within Mississippi Palisades State Park. Starved Rock State Park is the site of Starved Rock, a high, rugged rock mass along the Illinois River. The summit of the huge rock is the site of the former Fort Saint Louis, which was built by the French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, in 1682 and 1683. The state’s last remaining stand of virgin white pine is preserved farther north, in White Pines Forest State Park. Giant City State Park, in southern Illinois, has been so named because of the presence of huge blocks of eroded sandstone that resemble city buildings. Between them, deeply eroded fissures appear as avenues.

Monks Mound, the largest aboriginal earthen structure in the United States, is preserved in Cahokia Mounds State Historical Site in southwestern Illinois. Located at the site of the largest Native American city north of Mexico, Monks Mound covers 6 hectares (14 acres) and rises about 30 m (about 100 ft) in four terraces (see Mound Builders). The Cave-in-Rock State Park, on the Ohio River, is also the site of Native American mounds. Other picturesque parks are Ferne Clyffe State Park, Apple River Canyon State Park, Matthiessen State Park, and Illinois Beach State Park, which borders Lake Michigan.

In Fort de Chartres State Historic Site, on the Mississippi River in southwestern Illinois, is a restoration of the chief 18th-century fortress in the Illinois country. Fort Kaskaskia State Historic Site, in the southwestern part of the state, was once the site of Fort Kaskaskia, a historic fort that served the French during the middle part of the 18th century. All that remains of the original fort built on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River are the earthworks around the perimeter. Black Hawk State Historic Site, adjoining the city of Rock Island, includes a museum of Native American artifacts. The park is named for the chief who led the Sac and Fox in the Black Hawk War in 1832. In Lowden State Park, in northern Illinois, is the famous Black Hawk Monument, a concrete statue 15 m (50 ft) high of the Native American leader designed by the noted sculptor Lorado Taft.

A number of state sites preserve places associated with the life of Abraham Lincoln. One of the most picturesque monuments is in Lincoln’s New Salem State Historic Site, which lies northwest of Springfield. Within the park is a reconstruction of the pioneer village of New Salem, where Lincoln lived between 1831 and 1837. The village includes rustic log cabins, rail fences, a store, mills, and a reproduction of Rutledge Tavern, where Lincoln boarded. One original building remains on the site, the Onstot Cooper Shop, where Lincoln often studied in the evenings. In Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site, in eastern Illinois, is a reconstruction of the cabin of Lincoln’s father and stepmother.

There are also a number of state memorials in Illinois dedicated to Lincoln. The Lincoln Trail State Memorial marks the place where, in 1830, the Lincoln family crossed the Wabash River from Indiana into Illinois. Vandalia Statehouse, the former state capitol, where Lincoln served as a legislator, is also preserved as a state historic site. Lincoln is buried in the Lincoln Tomb State Historic Site in Springfield. Several courthouses where Lincoln practiced law have been preserved or reconstructed as state historic sites, including the original brick-and-timber Metamora Courthouse just northeast of Peoria, the restored Mount Pulaski Courthouse, and a replica of the Postville Courthouse at Lincoln.

Among other state memorials is Cahokia Courthouse State Historic Site, which preserves the oldest public building in the state. The building dates from 1737. The frame structure that once housed the first bank in the Illinois Territory stands within Shawneetown State Historic Site. The home of Ulysses S. Grant at Galena is now a state historic site as well. The Douglas Tomb State Historic Site in Chicago contains the tomb of the famous American statesman Stephen A. Douglas.

C

Other Places to Visit

Many of the state’s outstanding places to visit are in the Chicago area. Among the interesting places to visit elsewhere in Illinois is the famous Brookfield Zoo, which lies west of Chicago. At Lisle, also near Chicago, is the Morton Arboretum, which includes an extensive collection of plant life that covers 600 hectares (1,500 acres).

Places to visit in the city of Springfield include the State Capitol, the Old State Capitol, the Illinois State Museum, and the home of poet Vachel Lindsay. At Galesburg is the Carl Sandburg Birthplace, the restored cottage where the famous poet was born. Other restorations include the Mormon town of Nauvoo and the home and shops of the inventor John Deere at Grant Detour.