Illinois history exceeds the capacity of the Sears Catalog for categorization and the
World’s Fair for spectacle. And no matter what the self-appointed tour guide at the
local diner might say, the heritage of the land of Lincoln
doesn’t end with Capone’s demise. Like the
Chicago Loop, the Prairie State’s past seems to defy straightforward chronology—
Cahokia offered a version of urban sprawl more than a thousand years before the first
Windy City skyscraper. From
Park Forest to
Cave-in-Rock, scan our shelf of Illinois history books with the unflagging enthusiasm of a
Wrigley Field hot dog vendor.