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LAND OF LINCOLN AREA: 145,934 sq km (56,345 sq mi). POPULATION: 11,752,000. CAPITAL: Springfield, pop. 106,400. ECONOMY: Industry: machinery, food processing, electric equipment, chemical products, printing and publishing, fabricated metal products, transportation equipment, petroleum, coal. Agriculture: corn, soybeans, hogs, cattle, dairy products, wheat. PCI: $22,780.
Admission: 1818 as 21st state.
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Carl Sandburg’s image of Chicago as “City of the Big Shoulders” once evoked clanging stockyards and steel mills. Now metropolitan Chicago is one of the nation’s biggest manufacturing and mail-order centers, home to more than half of all Illinoisans. No other U.S. city moves more freight by train and truck, and O’Hare is the world’s busiest airport. Linked to the Atlantic via the St. Lawrence Seaway, Chicago shoulders cargo into the U.S. interior; canals and the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers
extend its reach to the Gulf of Mexico.
Manufacturing of farm equipment is a major industry downstate. Farmland covers four-fifths of Illinois, one of the top five states in export of soybeans and feed grains. Legislation calls for farmers to greatly reduce topsoil loss by the year 2000.
Text source: National Geographic Atlas of the World Revised Sixth Edition, 1995
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