Located along the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan, Chicago is a major U.S. city in the state of Illinois, and is a major center of transportation, industry, politics, culture, finance, medicine and higher education. Chicago is the largest city in Midwest and the most populous city in United States. Informally known as “Chicagoland” it was founded in 1833 as a town to link the Great Lakes with the Mississippi River System. It soon became a transportation center of the Northwest Territory, with major connections by steamboats, canals and railroads, and by 1890, it was one of the ten most influential cities of the world.

Geography
Wisconsinan Glaciation, the large glaciers of Ice Age is the present natural geography of Chicago. It carved out modern basin of Lake Michigan. The terminal moraines formed by the glacier today are low lines of hills in inhabited Chicagoland. The flat plain on which Chicago mostly lies on, is the bed of glacial Lake Chicago, which was a larger ancestor of Lake Michigan.

Beverly neighborhood is the highest natural point within Chicago at 41°42'12 .5 N, 87°40'37 W. In the beginning, it (Beverly) was called Blue Island because it looked like an island in set a tractless plain sea from a distance.

One special feature of the Chicago area was the now-vanished Mud Lake in the Des Plaines River watershed. Due to downstream ice blocks in the early spring in its banks, the river would flow through Mud Lake to the South Branch of the Chicago River, forming a favorite portage for early traders and creating the path of the future I&M and Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canals. When the city was originally found in 1830s, the land was swampy and most of the early construction began on low dune around the Chicago River's mouth.

Statistics
According to the United States Census Bureau, Chicago has a total area of 606.1 km². Out of the whole area 588.3 km² is land and 17.8 km² is water. The average height of its land is 579 above sea level. Chicago, along amid New York City, Los Angeles, and California, make up the three most massive cities of the U.S.

The Chicago Skyline
Cityscape

Chicago always had a history of frantic skyscraper building and along with Hong Kong and New York City; Chicago makes up the “big three”. It has 5 of the tallest buildings in the United States and 10 of the tallest in the world. Chicago is going through a massive skyscraper-building boom, with projects like 55 East Erie (the tallest residential building in the U.S. outside New York City) and Trump International Hotel (to be completed in 2007, it will the tallest building built in the U.S. for nearly three decades).

Chicago is also known as the “Windy City”. There’s a famous myth that in 1893 Chicago was competing with New York to host the 1893 Columbian Exposition and Dana, the editor of New York Sun supposedly coined the name as a derogatory moniker. Supposedly the term does not refer to the winds off Lake Michigan, but to the Chicagoan habit of shameless boasting. The story is not actually true.

Chicago’s name dates back to 1885 and refers to the breezes off the lake, with reference to “Windy City” and “City Of Winds”. Mathew's Dictionary of Americanisms includes an 1887 quotation of "Windy City, but the myth persists--especially due to reporters and editors who repeat the tale without checking the facts.

Chicago is also known as The Second City, not because it is the second largest city in US but due to its reconstruction after the famous Chicago fire. Finally, Chicago is sometimes called the The City That Works, a local promotional campaign by the Mayor Richard M. Daley administration. It refers to the long labor tradition, long working hours by residents, a stable or a municipal government, which provides plentiful services to its people.

Corruption in Chicago’s history cannot be ignored; Mafia was well established during its Prohibition era and names like Al Capone and Baby Face Nelson were very famous. Eliot Ness was known as the "incorruptible" investigator, Al Capone was ultimately sentenced on tax evasion and Baby Face Nelson was shot and killed. More recently in 2006, the former governor of Illinois, George Ryan, was convicted and sentenced to prison.

A major event in the city's history is The Chicago Fire. On October 8, 1871, Mrs. O’Leary’s cow knocking over an oil lamp in the crowded immigrant quarters in the West Side started a fire. This quickly spread throughout most of the city, killing 300 and destroying entire blocks, including most of the original downtown buildings. A famous surviving structure is the stone Water Tower, just north of the Loop.