Chicago and West

This Drive Comes From...

National Geographic Driving Guide: Great Lakes

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Taking its name from an Indian word for the wild onions growing along the marshy Lake Michigan shore, Chicago itself grew with abandon in the 19th century, as hundreds of thousands of people streamed in. First a gateway to the vast interior of the new nation, it became a hub for midwestern commerce and paraded its prosperity with a jaunt that was at once boastful and exhilarating.

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- Chicago
- Joliet
- Starved Rock State Park
- Galesburg
- Mississippi Palisades State Park
- Rockford

(Continued From Top)

Chicago

Enjoying Chicago?s architecture from the Chicago River

Photograph © Gail Mooney

The Windy City—a reference to the boasting, not the weather—is the portal for this ramble around northern Illinois. The route goes west through old canal towns and natural preserves, journeying all the way west to the busy Quad Cities on the Mississippi River. From Rock Island you follow the great river north to the charming, steep streets of historic Galena, then cross the state east to the Lake Michigan shore and, once again, the "city of big shoulders."
That’s what poet Carl Sandburg called Chicago (Convention & Tourism Bureau +1 312 567 8500) because he, like many others, thought of the city almost as if it were a person, loved for its outsized flaws as much for its graces. From the downtown high-rises to the bohemian world of Old Town, those shoulders carry a diverse load of people, drawn from all over the country and the world. It is a world-class commercial center, and a way station for trainloads of grain, freighters heavy with coal, and trucks loaded with manufactured goods. But Chicago has a vibrancy much greater than the frizzle of its commerce. No other American cities but New York and Los Angeles can match its cultural diversity and arts scene, and its history, young though it is by world standards, is beautifully etched in its architecture.
For the outstanding city design we can apparently thank a cow, which stands accused of kicking over a lantern in Patrick O’Leary’s barn one October night in 1871. The largely wooden city was decimated by a roaring fire, the heat of which could be felt across the lake in Holland, Michigan. From that tragedy, a better planned, better working, and immensely confident city arose, and Chicago became a showcase for skyscrapers and urban design. Even the debris from the fire was a plus: It was shoved behind a lakeside breakwater, and became the foundation of what’s now Grant Park.
Not a bad place to start: The parks that line much of Chicago’s lakeshore make this a particularly livable city, with leaf, lawn, and sand buffering the cityscape. Grant and Jackson Parks on the city’s south side, and Lincoln Park on the north side also contain world-class museums, science centers, a zoo, and an aquarium. You might want to park the car and go by foot or public transportation.

Gustav Caillebotte?s ?Paris Street; Rainy Day,? Art Institute of Chicago

Photograph © Layne Kennedy

The Grant Park museums alone are worth a week’s time—for that matter, you could spend hours gawking at just one painting, Georges Seurat’s pointillist “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” at the Art Institute of Chicago (Michigan Ave. and Adams St. +1 312 443 3600. Donation). Walk past the institute’s sentry lions and into a den of antiquity, stocked from huge collections of ancient and international art ranging from 3000 B.C. to present day. In the vast museum’s quieter corners, you’ll discover fascinating exhibits of contemporary urban photography, architectural drawings, and ornamentation from destroyed Chicago buildings.

Beluga whale performing at the John G. Shedd Aquarium, Chicago

Photograph © Layne Kennedy

Also in Grant Park looms the zodiac-shape Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum (1300 S. Lake Shore Dr. +1 312 322 0300. Adm. fee), where you can see the galaxies up close and tour exhibits on space exploration; the enormous John G. Shedd Aquarium (1200 S. Lake Shore Dr. +1 312 939 2438. Adm. fee), which offers dolphin and whale shows; and the Field Museum (1400 S. Lakeshore Dr. and Lake Shore Dr. +1 312 922 9410. Adm. fee), whose exhibits are culled from more than 19 million artifacts ranging from dinosaur bones to Native American crafts.
Farther south along the lake is the site of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, the 400-year celebration of the Europeans’ discovery of America. The fair’s Palace of Fine Arts became the 15-acre [6.1-hectare] Museum of Science and Industry (57th St. and Lake Shore Dr. +1 773 684 1414. Adm. fee), where you can walk through a 16-foot-high [4.9-meter-high] human heart and visit an underground coal mine.
Moving north along the lakeshore brings you to the glittering Navy Pier (600 E. Grand Ave. +1 312 595 PIER or 800 595 PIER) jutting out into the lake between Grant and Lincoln Parks at the foot of the downtown area. The 1916 pier has been modernized as a shopping and entertainment center featuring a towering Ferris wheel, IMAX 3-D theater, and a dock where you can hook up with sight-seeing boats, both power and sail. Newly moved to the pier is the Chicago Academy of Sciences’ Nature Museum (435 E. Illinois St., 3rd level. +1 773 871 2668. Adm. fee), where kids can build a kite or get muddy routing a river on the sand-filled Stream Table. At Lincoln Park’s south end awaits the Chicago Historical Society (1601 N. Clark St. and North Ave. +1 312 642 4600. Adm. fee), with permanent exhibits on Chicago history, some key historic documents including a first printing of the Bill of Rights, and a rich variety of lectures and films . The society provides walking and bus tours of the city; reservations are required.

Sears Tower

Photograph © Layne Kennedy

If you want to get an overview of the city before you start wandering its streets—and a view as well of the lake and bordering states—levitate to the 1,353-foot [412.4-meter] Skydeck, on the 103rd floor of the rabbit-eared Sears Tower (233 S. Wacker Dr., entrance on Jackson Blvd. +1 312 875 9696. Adm. fee). Sears is the nation’s tallest building, but it takes only 70 seconds for the elevators to climb its 110 stories. Some prefer the view from the slightly lower elevation of the 100-story John Hancock Center (875 N. Michigan Ave. +1 312 751 3681 or 888 875 8439. Adm. fee), where you can tilt your glass in the Signature Lounge on the 96th floor while gazing at the Loop or the lake, or visit the 94th-floor observatory.
The Loop is the core of the city, circled by ribbons of cable car tracks and now by the tracks of the "El" (elevated trains). A virtual history of modern urban architecture, as well as fine monumental art, can be seen on a fairly short Loop walking tour. There are other tour options—on the water, by bus, even by plane. Tour information is available at one of two Visitor Centers: at the Historic Water Tower (800 N. Michigan Ave. +1 312 744 6630), a miniature Gothic castle that hides a 140-foot [42.7-meter] pipe in its limestone tower, one of two buildings to survive the 1871 fire; or at the Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington St. +1 312 744 6630), a busy 1897 beaux arts building where the city mounts exhibits and stages free concerts. At the Visitor Centers you can pick up tickets during the summer for a free Saturday afternoon guided tour on the city’s "El," or rent "Audio Architecture," an inexpensive 90-minute self-guided tour with tape player and map.

Playing volleyball on a Lake Michigan beach

Photograph © Gail Mooney

The best resource for anyone interested in urban design is the Chicago Architecture Foundation Shop and Tour Center (224 S. Michigan Ave. +1 312 922 8687. Fee for tours. Reservations required for bus tours and river cruises). The foundation’s docents lead visitors on downtown bus and walking tours, and also on cruises that glide beneath the Chicago River’s many bridges for a unique look at landmark buildings.
Architectural tastes vary, but there are several can’t-miss structures worth seeing on your own or by tour. Shoppers can mask their passion for purchase behind a veneer of historical curiosity at two magnificent turn-of-the-century department stores: Carson Pirie Scott (1 S. State St. +1 312 641 7000), an 1899 Louis Sullivan masterpiece with cast-iron floral ornaments, and Marshall Field’s (835 N. Michigan Ave. +1 312 335 7700), with its big atrium and iron fountain in the midst of 73 acres [29.5 hectares] of floor space. Both stores have been renovated extensively and feature specialty shops for the most au courant tastes.
A few blocks away stands the 1930 art deco Chicago Board of Trade (141 W. Jackson Blvd. +1 312 435 3590. Mon.-Fri.), housing the oldest and largest futures exchanges. Traders jam together in a frenzied crush of buying and selling that may look like a deranged rugby match from the gallery. In fact, fortunes are being made and lost with the wave of a frantic hand.
North of the Michigan Avenue Bridge rise two 1920s gems, the Wrigley Building (400 N. Michigan Ave.), a white sugar confection of terra-cotta, and the 1922 Tribune Tower (435 N. Michigan Ave.), a mammoth Gothic structure with flying buttresses and imbedded stones stolen from the Parthenon and the Egyptian Pyramids by the newspaper’s reporters. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe brought Chicago into the modern era with designs such as the Federal Center (219 S. Dearborn St.), wher e solid slabs of Bauhaus are offset by Alexander Calder’s curvaceous "Flamingo" sculpture.
Calder’s sculpture is only one of many monumental outdoor artworks that decorate the city. The artists’ roster is a who’s who of 20th-century greats: There are Picasso’s untitled 1967 50-foot-tall [15.2-meter-tall] sculpture at Richard J. Daley Civic Center Plaza (50 W. Washington Blvd.), a popular site for public demonstrations; Marc Chagall’s huge mosaic, "The Four Seasons," at the First National Plaza (Dearborn and Monroe Sts.); Claes Oldenburg’s amusing 100-foot [30.5-meter] "Batcolumn" at the Harold Washington SSA Building Plaza (600 W. Madison St.); and many others, described in a guide available at the Visitor Centers.
A few other downtown attractions shouldn’t be missed. The Chicago Athenaeum (6 N. Michigan Ave. +1 312 251 0175. Closed Mon.; Adm. fee) features fascinating displays on architecture and industrial design from radios to ice-cream scoops; and the spacious new Museum of Contemporary Art (220 E. Chicago Ave. +1 312 280 2660. Closed Mon.; Adm. fee) offers airy exhibit areas for modern sculpture and paintings.
In the evening, Chicago offers the unquenchable variety you would expect in a cosmopolitan city, from the Chicago Symphony (220 S. Michigan Ave. +1 312 294 3000. Adm. fee) to the comedy club Second City (1616 N. Wells St. +1 312 337 3992. Adm. fee) to the world-champion Chicago Bulls (United Center, 1901 W. Madison St. +1 312 455 4500. Adm. fee) during basketball season. What Chicago has that no other city can match—well, besides Michael Jordan—is a lineup of blues clubs that define the idiom. A good place to start is Buddy Guy’s Legends (754 S. Wabash Ave. +1 312 427 1190. Adm. fee), where you may get lucky and find the guitar giant himself jamming with his old harmonica-mate, Junior Wells.
Best to get back in the car for visits to the city’s fringes. On the South Side you can tour the Gothic Revival buildings of the University of Chicago (1212 E. 59th St. +1 773 702 8374), including the Rockefeller Memorial Chapel (5850 S. Woodlawn Ave. +1 773 702 9292. Call for carillon concert schedule), a structure designed by Bertram Goodhue. Also on campus is the Robie House (5757 S. Woodlawn Ave +1 773 834 1361. Adm. fee), one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie School designs.

Moore-Dugal Residence, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, Oak Park

Photograph © Layne Kennedy

Some of Wright’s finest work can be found in the west Chicago suburb of Oak Park (Visitors Bureau +1 708 524 7800). The architect perfected the Prairie School style in more than twenty Oak Park residences, many of them seen on a neighborhood walking tour with audiotapes provided by the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio (951 Chicago Ave. +1 708 848 1978. Adm. fee). Also on the route is the Wright-designed Unity Temple (875 Lake St. +1 708 383 8873. Guided tours Mem. Day–Labor Day Sat.-Sun.; Adm. fee for tour), a 1909 poured-concrete building of massive simplicity. Guided tours of Wright’s house and studio feature an octagonal-roofed structure on a square base, a children’s playroom with a barrel-vaulted ceiling, and panel dividers that indicate Wright, at only 22, was already influenced by Japanese design.
Wright’s celebrity in Oak Park is oddly paired with author Ernest Hemingway, who was born here in 1899. The Ernest Hemingway Museum (200 N. Oak Park Ave. +1 708 848 2222. Fri.-Sun.; Adm. fee), a block from his actual birthplace at 339 N. Oak Park Avenue, exhibits the writer’s early scribblings and memorabilia.
West of Oak Park in Batavia, you can take a free tour of the fastest energy-particle accelerator in the world at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (500 Pine St. +1 630 840 3351. Call for tour information). The protons whiz around at nearly the speed of light in a helium-cooled tube that encircles a peaceful acreage of experimentally restored prairie, complete with hiking and biking trails.
In nearby Aurora, the Hollywood Casino (1 New York St. Bridge. +1 630 801 1234 or 800 888 7777) follows the letter of Illinois gambling laws by conducting its business in faux riverboats that cast off and go nowhere but about 50 feet [15 meters] from the dock.

Joliet

Inside Harrah's Joiliet Casino

Photograph © Layne Kennedy

Drive south to Joliet and its entertainment palaces old and new: The Rialto Square Theater (102 N. Chicago St. +1 815 726 6600. Adm. fee) was a classic vaudeville and movie house, and still stages extravaganzas behind its six-story facade of glorious ornamental terra-cotta, tile, and gild; two blocks away on the river, you’ll find casinos housed in pale imitations of the great riverboats of old, the Empress Casino Joliet (2300 Empress Dr. +1 815 744 9400 or 888 4EMPRESS) and Harrah’s Joliet Casino (151 N. Joliet St. +1 815 740 7800 or 800 HARRAHS).
A quick jaunt north on Illinois 171 brings you to Lockport (Chamber of Commerce +1 815 838 3357), the headquarters for the Illinois & Michigan (I&M) Canal, a man-made waterway that rose through a series of locks to connect the Des Plaines and Chicago Rivers, linking the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River system in the 1840s. Exhibits in the Illinois & Michigan Canal Museum (803 S. State St. +1 815 838 5080) describe the building of the canal and its commercial significance. Down along the canal itself, you can stroll through a village of pioneer buildings made of hand-hewn logs.
The drive now follows the 96-mile [154.5-kilometer] I&M Canal route west. Barges have not floated through the canal’s 15 locks since 1933, but the towpaths are busy with walkers and bicyclists, and wayside signs explain what life was like here 150 years ago. Lengthy portions of the towpaths form the I&M Canal State Trail (For maps and information call +1 815 942 0796) beginning at Channahon State Park (Canal St., Channahon. +1 815 467 4271), a shady enclave featuring two of the canal’s locks and a lock-tender’s house. The trail runs 60 miles [96.6 kilometers] to La Salle, with many accesses along the way. Among them awaits Buffalo Rock State Park (Dee Bennett Rd. +1 815 433 2220), featuring five mound sculptures mad e in the 1980s by reclaiming strip-mine spoil piles that had blighted the landscape since the 1930s. You can hike among the "Effigy Tumuli," shaped in the style of Indian burial mounds to resemble creatures including frogs and water striders.

Starved Rock State Park
Two miles [3.2 kilometers] west at the Illinois Waterway Visitor Center (Dee Bennett Rd. +1 815 667 4054), you can learn about locks and dams and watch them at work. You also get a good view of 2,630-acre [1,064.3-hectare] Starved Rock State Park (1 mile [1.6 kilometers] S of Utica, on Illinois 178. +1 815 667 4726), across the river. The park is centered around a sandstone prominence where an 18th-century band of Illiniwek starved to death while besieged by enemies below. Many today are fed in its 1930s lodge and restaurant, and hiking trails wind along the river and into deep, craggy canyons. South on Illinois 178 you’ll find Matthiessen State Park (+1 815 667 4868)—more bluffs and canyons and fewer people.
Religious dissidents from Sweden built a utopian community on the Illinois plains in the 1840s, and today the wide, peaceful streets and sturdy buildings of Bishop Hill State Historic Site (N of US 34. +1 309 927 3345. Donation) still reflect the simplicity and rigor that made it a success. The town is now a mixture of craft shops and restored historical sites, including the 1848 church, with displays reflecting the beliefs of leader Erik Jansson and his flock.

Galesburg
Among the Swedish immigrants who settled in central Illinois was a couple named Sandburg, whose child Carl became a renowned poet and biographer of Abraham Lincoln. Sandburg’s ashes are buried behind his family’s three-room cottage in Galesburg, at the Carl Sandburg State Historic Site (331 E. 3rd St. +1 309 342 2361. Donation). The house contains family furnishings, and the Visitor Center focuses on Sandburg’s life and work.
The route turns north to meet the Mississippi River at the Quad Cities (Visitors Bureau +1 309 788 7800 or 800 747 7800), with Moline and Rock Island on the Illinois bank and Davenport and Bettendorf on the Iowa side. The economies of these towns grew around two farm implement dealers, John Deere and International Harvester. Deere was a blacksmith turned industrialist whose self-scouring steel plow furrowed the plains. At Deere & Company’s beautifully landscaped, modern World Headquarters (1 John Deere Pl., 7 miles [11.3 kilometers] SE of Moline. +1 309 765 8000) you can climb on tractors of all sizes and see artifacts of old-time farming. In downtown Moline, there are more extensive displays on how food gets from the seed to the plate at the new John Deere Pavilion (1400 River Dr. +1 309 765 1000)—part of a complex on the river that offers shopping, restaurants, and hotels.
Before there were tractors, there were the Sauk and Fox tribes, who rebelled when settlers plowed up their burial grounds. The story of the Black Hawk War of 1832, and the Indian way of life before Europeans came, is told at the John Hauberg Indian Museum (1510 46th Ave., Rock Island. +1 309 788 9536. Donation), on a bluff above the Rock River in Blackhawk State Historic Site.
The U.S. Army makes artillery guns, M-9 pistols, and other armaments on Arsenal Island in the Mississippi River. Rock Island Arsenal Museum (Bldg. 60. +1 309 782 5021) displays everythi ng from Indian war flintlocks to captured Iraqi assault rifles. Explore the island and you’ll come upon a meadow of plain grave markers surrounded by cannons: the cemetery where nearly 2,000 Confederate soldiers and 125 Union guards were laid to rest during the island’s years as a Civil War prison.

Mississippi Palisades State Park
Like so many other river towns, the Quad Cities now host gambling boats, three at last count, which cast off for gaming on the not-so-high seas. Not all boats on the river are crammed with one-armed bandits, though, and this is one of the most rewarding stretches of the great river for sight-seeing. Driving north on Illinois 84 and US 20—along the Great River Road—you’ll see barges, fishing boats, and a rare canoe wandering the broad river, which braids around an island now and then, and undercuts tall wooded bluffs along the shore. At Mississippi Palisades State Park (16327A Illinois 84 N., Savanna. +1 815 273 2731), trails take you right to the edge of these cliffs for breathtaking views.
Well before most American towns realized the appetite travelers have for history, Galena (Visitors Bureau +1 815 777 4390 or 800 747 9377) had begun preserving and publicizing its 19th-century look. It comes by its historical buildings honestly. Lead mining created wealth in Galena in the 1820s—it became the biggest river port north of St. Louis, and soon its hills were dotted with opulent buildings. River silt and the decline of the mines quieted the commerce long ago, but today the charm of its steep, narrow streets and fine old architecture lures crowds. The Old Market House State Historic Site (123 N. Commerce St. +1 815 777 2570. Mem. Day-Oct.; donation) offers information about Galena’s sights, a well-preserved corner of a general store, and architecture and history displays. More in-depth exhibits are found up the hill at the Galena/Jo Daviess County History Museum (211 S. Bench St. +1 815 777 9129. Adm. fee). The Italianate 1857 Belvedere Mansion (1008 Park Ave. +1 815 777 0747. Mem. Day–Oct., Adm. fee) lavishly shows off a steamboat magnate’s wealth in its 22 rooms.

Ulysses S. Grant Home State Historic Site, Galena

Photograph © Layne Kennedy

One Galena resident was neither rich nor well known when he left to serve the Union in the Civil War, but when Ulysses S. Grant returned, proud locals gave him a handsome brick home. The Grants lived in what is now the Ulysses S. Grant Home State Historic Site (500 Bouthillier St. +1 815 777 0248. Donation) periodically after the war until 1881.

Farm-dotted hills around Galena

Photograph © Layne Kennedy

Hilly Galena is in part of what geologists call the “driftless area”—country that escaped the scouring, flattening effects of ice age glaciers. To explore these steep hills and canyons, proceed east on US 20 and north on N. Canyon Park Road to Apple River Canyon State Park (+1 815 745 3302. Park office open Mon.-Fri.) and hike along the river.

Rockford
Heading back toward Chicago, urban reentry begins in Rockford (Visitors Bureau +1 815 963 8111 or 800 521 0849). Here, Midway Village and Museum Center (6799 Guilford Rd. +1 815 397 9112. Adm. fee) recreates a village of a century ago. At the Discovery Center (711 N. Main St. +1 815 963 6769. June-Aug. daily, Sept.-May Tues.-Sun.; Adm. fee) computers and giant magnets make science fun.
Farther east, pick up I-90 to Des Plaines, where the golden arches still advertise a 15-cent burger at the McDonald’s Museum (400 N. Lee St. +1 847 297 5022). From here, follow Illinois 58 to Evanston, home of Northwestern University (Admissions Office, 1967 Sheridan Rd. +1 847 491 7271) and its various gardens and sculpture. The historical society is lodged in the 1894 Charles Gates Dawes House (225 Greenwood St. +1 847 475 3410. Adm. fee), where Calvin Coolidge’s vice president once lived. Finally, the Grosse Point Lighthouse and Lakefront (2601 Sheridan Rd. +1 847 328 6961. June-Sept. Sat.-Sun.; Adm. fee) has nice stretches of beach, historical buildings, and the yellow lighthouse tower, erected in 1873 and topped by a beacon that still works. Return to Chicago via US 41.