Chicago

With a rapidly increasing population came a demand for better sanitation, so the US’s first sewerage system was built in Chicago. Untreated waste was channelled into the Chicago River, and then into Lake Michigan, but this polluted the city's water supply. The problem was finally solved in 1900, when engineers managed to reverse the flow of the Chicago River so the water flowed away from Lake Michigan rather than into it.

In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed a large part of the city. From the ruins of the wooden buildings arose more modern constructions of steel and stone, including the world's first skyscraper in 1885.

From 1890 to 1914 immigration largely consisted of unskilled workers from Eastern and Southern Europe, including Poles, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Hungarians, Czechs, Slovaks, Greeks, and Italians, and Jews from throughout eastern Europe. Immigration from outside the US was restricted after World War I, by which time tens of thousands of African Americans started to came north from the rural South in the Great Migration. They settled in the near South Side of the city.

In 1919, a law making the production and sale of alcohol illegal in the US was passed. This led to the Gangster or Prohibition Era, which continued until 1933 when the law was repealed. The 1920s saw gangsters, including Al Capone, Bugs Moran and others, battle it out with the police and each other on the streets of Chicago. Chicago was the location of the St Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929, when Capone’s men gunned down a rival gang.

Consultant: Nicholas Harris

History of Illinois

600–1300 AD
Cahokia, the largest city of the Native American Mississippian culture, located near present-day Collinsville, Illinois, flourishes. Its population may have exceeded 30,000 at its peak

end of the 17th century
Illinois, Potawatomi, Miami, Sauk, Fox (Mesquakie), Ioway, Kickapoo, Mascouten, Piankashaw, Shawnee, Wea and Winnebago (Ho-Chunk) Native American peoples live in the area at the time of the arrival of the first European explorers

1673
French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet are the first Europeans to visit the region

1675
Marquette returns to establish a mission in the region

1680
French explorer Robert de La Salle travels from Lake Michigan to the Illinois, where he founds Fort Creve Coeur, and with Henri de Tonti in 1683, Fort St Louis on Starved Rock cliff

1699
French settlers establish the first permanent settlement at Cahokia, near present-day East St Louis; the area is part of French Louisiana

1763
Great Britain acquires the region at the end of the French and Indian Wars

1783
After the American Revolutionary War, the US gains control; Virginia cedes the area to the new US and it becomes part of the Northwest Territory

1800
Illinois is made part of Indiana Territory

1809
Illinois becomes a separate territory, with its capital at Kaskaskia, an early French settlement

1810s
American settlers cross the Appalachians and reach Illinois via the Ohio River, then up the “lazy” Mississippi

1818
Illinois becomes a state

1825
Opening of the Erie Canal leads to a mass influx of white settlers

1830s
Chicago, one of the few natural harbours on southern Lake Michigan, starts to grow rapidly

1830s
John Deere's improved design of the steel plough turns Illinois' rich prairies into productive farmland, attracting immigrant farmers from Germany and Sweden

1832
After defeat in the Black Hawk War, Native American tribes are driven west of the Mississippi

1840s-50s
Industrial development comes with the opening of factories and the building of the railways

1858
Illinois lawyer Abraham Lincoln wins national attention with debate on the slavery issue

1861
Lincoln becomes president and fights to preserve the Union after the South's secession

1860s
The meatpacking industry develops in Chicago

1871
Great Fire destroys most of the city of Chicago

1910–1940
First Great Migration: tens of thousands of African Americans come north from the rural South of the US to live and work in Chicago and other northeastern and Midwestern cities

1919
Chicago race riot, started by white Americans against black Americans on the South Side of Chicago. It is considered the worst riot of what becomes known as the "Red Summer" in the US.

1919–33
Prohibition Era: gangsters, including Al Capone, Bugs Moran and others, battle it out with the police and each other on the streets of Chicago

1942
As part of the Manhattan Project, the University of Chicago conducts the first sustained nuclear chain reaction.

1955–76
Mayor Richard J. Daley dominates Chicago's political landscape.

1960
Ray Kroc opens the first McDonald's fast-food restaurant in Des Plaines.

1968
Protests against the Vietnam War at the Democratic National Convention held in Chicago result in street violence

1974
Sears Tower, now known as the Willis Tower, is completed in Chicago. At 442 m (1451 ft) it becomes (until 1998) the world's tallest building.

1993
The Great Flood of 1993 occurs along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers and their tributaries. Among the most devastating ever floods experienced in the US, it causes damage to farmland and towns in Illinois.