United States Geography in the Early Republic - ILLINOIS

Illinois

Became a state in 1818, just after Indiana (1816), and Mississippi (1817), and before Alabama (1819), Maine (1820), and Missouri (1821). It remained for years the northwesternmost state, bordered on the northwest and north by territories which achieved statehood, as Iowa and Wisconson, in 1846 and 1848.

Its western boundary, from top to bottom, is the great Mississippi River. Across this river, in 1830 as today, was its southwestern neighbor, Missouri, containing the largest city that far to the west; containing all of 6,000 people. A number of rivers procede generally from east to west.

The Illinois is the largest, extending from around 60 miles southwest of Chicago across and down to Grafton, which is about 15 miles upriver from Alton, which is in turn about 10 miles upriver from St. Louis. The biggest city along the river is Peoria, around the middle.

The Kaskaskia River crosses most of the state roughly parallel to, and south of, the Illinois. On it is Illinois' first state capitol, Vandalia.

The eastern boundaries of Illinois are (from north to south), a roughly 60-mile stretch of the Lake Michigan shore, a line running about 150 miles straight south from Chicago, separating Illinois from Indiana, some 120 miles (as the crow files, not as the river flows) of the Wabash River, and finally along the southeast, the Ohio river.

Illinois

Towns and Cities of Illinois

Illinois

Counties of Illinois

Rivers, Lakes, etc, of Illinois

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