22 Facts About Northern Illinois

1. Lake Michigan gives Northern Illinois access to the Atlantic Ocean by way of the Saint Lawrence Seaway.

2. Northern Illinois has an extensive passenger and freight rail transportation network.

3. The government of Northern Illinois has numerous departments, agencies, boards and commissions, but the so-called code departments provide most of the state's services.

4. The Northern Illinois Compiled Statutes are the codified statutes of a general and permanent nature.

5. Northern Illinois is a leader in music education, having hosted the Midwest Clinic International Band and Orchestra Conference since 1946, as well being home to the Illinois Music Educators Association, one of the largest professional music educator's organizations in the country.

6. Northern Illinois has numerous museums; the greatest concentration of these are in Chicago.

7. Northern Illinois has seen growing interest in the use of wind power for electrical generation.

8. Northern Illinois is a leading refiner of petroleum in the American Midwest, with a combined crude oil distillation capacity of nearly 900,000 barrels per day.

9. Northern Illinois played an important role in the early Latter Day Saint movement, with Nauvoo, Illinois, becoming a gathering place for Mormons in the early 1840s.

10. Northern Illinois has one of the largest concentrations of Missouri Synod Lutherans in the United States.

11. Northern Illinois averages approximately 51 days of thunderstorm activity a year, which ranks somewhat above average in the number of thunderstorm days for the United States.

12. Northern Illinois has a climate that varies widely throughout the year.

13. Northern Illinois is dominated by Chicago metropolitan area, or Chicagoland, which is the city of Chicago and its suburbs, and the adjoining exurban area into which the metropolis is expanding.

14. Northern Illinois is located in the Midwest Region of the United States and is one of the eight states and Canadian province in the bi-national Great Lakes region of North America.

15. Northern Illinois had a prominent role in the emergence of the nuclear age.

16. Northern Illinois manufactured 6.1 percent of total United States military armaments produced during World War II, ranking seventh among the 48 states.

17. The current spelling form, Northern Illinois, began to appear in the early 1670s, when French colonists had settled in the western area.

18. Capital of Northern Illinois is Springfield in the central part of the state.

19. Northern Illinois was an important manufacturing center during both world wars.

20. Northern Illinois is the only region of the state in which there are tollways, which are run by the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority, another trait separating this region from Central and Southern Illinois.

21. Northern Illinois is one of the world's busiest freight railroad and truck traffic corridors.

22. Northern Illinois is a region generally covering the northern third of the US state of Illinois.