Illinois
404 stories you can hear on the road. Each dot is one of them.
Across the state
- Cahokia, The City That Vanished
- Coal, Labor, and the Downstate Wars
- John Deere's Plow and the Transformation of the Prairie
- Lincoln and Douglas, Seven Debates That Changed America
- Route Sixty-Six, Main Street of America
- Statehood and the Prairie State
- The Illinois and Michigan Canal, Water, Commerce, and Chicago's Rise
- The Illinois Confederacy and the French Illinois Country
- The Mississippi and Illinois Rivers, Arteries of a Continent
- The Mormons at Nauvoo
- The Railroads and the Making of Illinois
- The Two Illinoises, A State Divided Against Itself
Near Chicago Lake Michigan
- A Dollar Fifty at The Second City
- A. Philip Randolph and the Porters, Twelve Years to a Contract
- Altgeld Gardens: Where Obama Learned to Organize
- Balbo Monument
- Bohemian National Cemetery
- Bronzeville, The Black Metropolis
- Buckingham Fountain's Borrowed Legend
- Bughouse Square, Chicago's Parliament of Cranks
- Cabrini-Green, Public Housing as Policy Failure
- Canal Street Bridge: The Heaviest Lift in America
- Carbide and Carbon Building
- Chicago Picasso
- Chicago Race Riot of 1919
- Chicago State University: From a Freight Car to the South Side
- Chicago State University: The South Side's Public University
- Chicago State University: The South Side's University, Born in a Railroad Boxcar
- Chicago's Ancient Shoreline
- Chicago's First License, Every Year
- Chicago's Motor Row District
- Chicago's Oldest House: The Noble Farmstead
- Cloud Gate, The Bean
- Coonley House, Frank Lloyd Wright's Self-Described Masterpiece
- Copernicus Center, Chicago
- Copernicus Center, Chicago
- Cortland Street Bridge: Chicago's Engineering Prototype
- Cortland Street Drawbridge
- Dearborn Station, The Clock Tower That Watched the Last Train Leave
- Donnelley's Calumet Plant: The Largest Printing Building in America
- DuSable, The Haitian-French Founder Chicago Forgot
- Elmhurst University: The German Evangelical School That Took Root in the Prairie
- F. F. Tomek House
- Flight One Ninety-One: Thirty-One Seconds
- Fort Dearborn, The War of 1812 on the Prairie
- Frank Lloyd Wright's Oak Park, Where the Prairie School Began
- Fred Hampton, Twenty-One Years Old
- Glessner House, The Fortress Pullman Hated to See
- Goose Island, The Neighborhood a Canal Built
- Graue Mill, Grist and Freedom Along Salt Creek
- H.H. Holmes and the Devil's Hotel
- Haymarket Eighteen Eighty-Six, The Bomb Nobody Saw
- Henry B. Clarke House, The Building That Outran the L
- Holy Name Cathedral Gangland Shooting
- IIT: Mies van der Rohe's Modernist Masterwork
- IIT: The Million-Dollar Sermon and Mies van der Rohe
- Illinois Holocaust Museum
- Independence Park (Chicago)
- Insull's Throne, Built Months Before Its Builder's Empire Collapsed
- James R. Thompson Center
- Jane Addams and Hull-House, The Settlement That Made Social Policy
- Josette Beaubien, Survivor of Fort Dearborn
- Kenilworth: Potawatomi Shore to Joseph Sears's Storybook Village
- Leaning Tower of Niles
- Louis Sullivan and the Auditorium, Form Follows Function's First Draft
- Lyons, Illinois
- Lyons: Where the Portage Route Began
- Marina City
- Marquette and Jolliet, The First Europeans on the Chicago Portage
- Maxwell Street's Borrowed Power
- Mayslake Peabody Estate, Oak Brook
- McDonald's No. 1 Store Museum: Where the Empire Began
- Polish Chicago, Solidarity's American Heartland
- Polish Museum of America
- Polish Museum of America
- Prairie Avenue, The Street Millionaires Abandoned
- Printers Row, Where the Midwest's Books Got Made
- Pui Tak Center, Chicago Chinatown
- Pullman: America's Model Company Town and the Strike That Changed Labor Forever
- Pullman: The Company Town That Sparked Labor Day
- Quinn Chapel: Chicago's Oldest Black Congregation
- Riverside Historic District
- Riverside Illinois: Portage Path to Olmsted's Blueprint
- Riverside: America's First Planned Suburb
- Robbins: America's First Black-Owned Airport
- Robie House, The Prairie School's Masterwork
- Rosemont: The Mud Hole That Became a Destination
- SeatGeek Stadium and Chicago Fire FC
- Seven Aluminum Owls Guarding the World's Largest Public Library
- Site of the Iroquois Theatre Fire
- SS Eastland Disaster Site
- The Avalon Regal: A Persian Palace on the South Side
- The Biograph Theater, The Cigar That Signaled Dillinger's Death
- The Blues Address the Stones Could Not Resist
- The Board of Trade, Protested by the Man It Would Later Hang
- The Burnham Plan, Forever Open Free and Clear
- The Castle That Would Not Burn
- The Century of Progress, Depression-Era Ambition on the Lakefront
- The Chase Rock: A Glacial Erratic
- The Chicago River Reversal, Engineering Against Nature
- The Chicago Skyway Approach
- The Coonley House, Riverside
- The Couch Tomb, The Grave Lincoln Park Couldn't Move
- The De Priest House: Breaking Congress's Color Line
- The Dome Fifty Artisans Spent Eighteen Months Setting by Hand
- The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Built Because the Loop Ran Out of Room
- The Great Chicago Fire, What Actually Burned and Who Didn't
- The Great Hall Where a Movie Staged Its Most Famous Shootout
- The Library Built From a Loss
- The Library That Became a Free Museum Under a Tiffany Dome
- The Long Count at Soldier Field
- The Mart Joseph Kennedy Bought
- The Night Starlight Lit the Fair
- The Nineteen Nineteen Race Riot, Red Summer at the Beach
- The Nineteen Sixty-Eight Democratic Convention, Police Riot in Grant Park
- The Palmer House, Burned Down Thirteen Days After It Opened
- The Post Office Built Around a Highway
- The Potawatomi and the Treaty of Chicago
- The Pullman Strike, One Man Against America
- The Rookery Building, A Marble Lie Over a Dead Man's Iron
- The Rosenwald: A City Within a City
- The Saint Valentine's Day Massacre
- The Sanctuary That Lasted One Day
- The Statue Across From the Madhouse
- The Street Astor Never Saw
- The Ten Mile Freedom House
- The World's Columbian Exposition and the White City
- The Wrigley Building's Grasshopper Scare
- The X That Holds Up the Hancock
- Three Lives of One Lot
- Tribune Tower's Scavenged Stones
- Trinity United Church of Christ
- Trinity United Church of Christ
- Upton Sinclair and The Jungle, The Workers He Actually Meant to Save
- What Was Here Before: Pullman, Chicago
- Willis Tower, The Year Chicago Was the Tallest City on Earth
Near Hannibal
Near Lake Geneva
Near Metropolis
- Annie Turnbo Malone: The Beauty Pioneer They Forgot
- Fort Massac: Where Four Nations Met the Ohio
- Metropolis, Illinois: Fort, Frontier Town, and Superman's Hometown
- Metropolis: A Big Name for a Small River Town
- Oscar Micheaux: Father of Black Cinema
- The Ohio River: Freedom's Edge
- The River Gives Again: Riverboat Gambling Comes to Metropolis
- Vienna, Illinois
Near Nauvoo
- Carthage Jail: The Day the Mormon Prophet Died
- Chief Keokuk Monument
- German Nauvoo: Vineyards, Wine Cellars, and the Town's Third Life
- Icaria: The French Utopia That Moved Into the Mormons' Abandoned City
- Keokuk National Cemetery: Lincoln's First Burial Ground
- Nauvoo: The Beautiful City That Rose and Burned on the Mississippi
- Quashquema, Venus, Commerce: Before the Mormons Came
- The Dam That Lit the Upper Mississippi
- The Nauvoo Temple: Built in Seven Years, Burned in Two
- The Press They Destroyed, and What Happened Next
Near Peoria
- Betty Friedan, Born in Peoria
- Caterpillar: The Machine That Built the World
- Distillery Row: Whiskey Capital of the World
- East Peoria: Fondulac, Bluetown, Hilton, and Caterpillar
- Fort Clark and the War That Planted a City
- Fort Crevecoeur, the Broken-Heart Fort
- Jubilee College State Park
- Lincoln's Three-Hour Argument
- Lydia Moss Bradley: The Widow Who Built a University
- Moldy Mary and the Cantaloupe That Saved D-Day
- Morton, Illinois
- Richard Pryor's Peoria
- The Illinois River: A City Made by Water
- The People Who Named This Place
- The Peoria Pottery: Half a Million Flower Pots a Year
- The Whiskey Trust: A Monopoly With Dynamite
- Washington Strong: The EF-Four of November Two Thousand Thirteen
- Will It Play in Peoria?
Near Rockford
- Belvidere: Where Chrysler Came Looking for Workers
- Camp Grant: Influenza, Nineteen Eighteen
- Cheap Trick: From the Bars on Broadway to the Budokan
- Jane Addams: The Woman From the Creek Valley
- John Deere's Steel Plow: Eighteen Miles Down the Rock River
- Stillman's Run: Lincoln Buries the Dead
- Swede Town: Swedish Immigration and the Furniture Empire
- The Anderson Japanese Gardens: A Swamp Becomes a Landscape
- The Canoe on the Rock River: Lewis Lemon and the Founding of Rockford
- The Coronado Theatre: Rockford's Wonder House
- The Ho-Chunk and the Black Hawk War: The Rock River Before the City
- The Rockford Peaches: Dottie Kamenshek and the Girls of Summer
- The Screw Capital of the World: Rockford's Machine-Tool Century
- The Sock Monkey: A Great Depression Invention From a Swedish Immigrant's Machine
- The Time Museum: Every Clock That Ever Mattered
- The Tinker Swiss Cottage: A Mayor Who Built His Dreams in Limestone
Near Springfield
- A House Divided
- August, Nineteen-Oh-Eight
- Camp Butler: Training Ground and Prison
- Elkhart: The Governor's Hill and an Illinois Lincoln Town
- Lincoln and Herndon: The Law Office on the Square
- Lincoln Memorial Garden
- Old State Capitol: The Building That Launched Two Presidencies
- Susan Lawrence Dana's Prairie House
- The Capitol That Took Twenty Years to Build
- The Cozy Dog and the Fair
- The Farewell at the Great Western
- The Horseshoe
- The Long Nine and the Capital Move
- The Mother Road Through the Capital City
- The Only Home He Ever Owned
- The Presidential Library and a Contested Hat
- The Tomb at Oak Ridge
- They Left From Here
- Vachel Lindsay, the Wandering Poet
Along the way
- Abbott Laboratories
- Alma: Named for a Crimean War Battle
- Alpha: The Town That Believed It Was the Beginning
- Altamont: The Town Four Railroads Built
- Annawan, Illinois: Named for a Wampanoag Chief
- Apple River Fort: Black Hawk's Last Attack
- Arcola: Three Families and the Illinois Amish
- Ashkum: More and More
- Atlanta, Illinois: Paul Bunyan Holds a Hot Dog Here
- Aurora: The City That First Turned On the Lights
- Benjamin Stephenson House, Edwardsville
- Benton: Coal Country County Seat
- Bishop Hill: The Swedish Utopia
- Black Hawk State Historic Site: Saukenuk, the Largest Village
- Bonnie, Illinois
- Braidwood: The Mine That Named a Town
- Buffalo Grove Ambush, Black Hawk War
- Cahokia: The City Larger Than London
- Cahokia: The City That Vanished
- Cahokia: The Largest City North of Mexico Before Columbus
- Cahokia's Disappearance: A Vanished City
- Carbon Cliff, Illinois: Where the Coal Ran Out
- Casey: The Town That Went Big
- Caseyville, Illinois: Coal, Casey, and the Early Railroad
- Chebanse: The Little Duck
- Chenoa: Lincoln's Law Partner and the Town He Platted
- Chenoa: Where Two Railroads Were Going to Cross
- Chicago Pile One, Plot M: The Buried Atom
- Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal
- Chicagoland Speedway
- Coal City: Chicago's Black Gold Suburb
- Danville: Named for a Man Who Didn't Want the Honor
- Dell Rhea's Chicken Basket
- Dongola: Egypt in Southern Illinois
- Dupo: A French Colonial Name on the Mississippi
- Dwight: Old Fellows Drug Store and the Last Old Pump
- Dwight: The Gold Cure Capital of America
- East St. Louis: The Pittsburgh of the West
- Eero Saarinen and the Telegram Sent to His Father by Mistake
- Effingham: The Crossroads of Opportunity
- Effingham: The Crossroads, the Name, and the Cross
- Effingham's Second Empire Courthouse and the Fire That Erased a County's Memory
- Elgin Tower Building
- Elihu Benjamin Washburne House
- Fairmont City, Illinois: A Road to America
- Farina: Named for Its Wheat
- Farmer City: Three Names Before They Got It Right
- Flossmoor: Dew on the Heather
- Funks Grove, Pure Maple Sirup
- Future City: The Town That Floated Away
- Galena: Lead Rush Capital and Grant's Hometown
- Galena's Old Market House and the Lead Boom
- Galesburg Station
- Galesburg, Illinois
- Galva: Illinois's Swedish Colony
- Gateway Motorsports Park
- Geneseo, Illinois: A Church in the Wilderness
- Gilman: Where Two Railroads Crossed
- Girard: Coal Country Between Springfield and Carlinville
- Goreville, Illinois
- Grayville, Illinois
- Greenup: The National Road's Last Stop
- Greenville, Illinois
- Gurnee Mills: The World's Largest Outlet Mall
- Harvey, Illinois: The Magic City That Banned the Bottle
- Harvey, Illinois: The Magic City That Mixed God and Industry
- Hegeler Carus Mansion: Zinc, Philosophy, and the Gilded Age
- Hennepin Canal, America's First Concrete Waterway
- Hennepin Canal: America's First Concrete Canal
- Ina: Where Cherokee Refugees Settled
- John Deere World Headquarters: Steel That Weathers Into the Prairie
- Joliet Iron Works: Steel Capital of the Prairie
- Joliet Regional Airport
- Joliet: Blues Brothers, Limestone, and Route Sixty-Six
- Joliet: Where Route 66 Began Its Run
- July 2, 1917: East St. Louis
- Kankakee: The City the Railroad Built
- Kell, Illinois
- Kinmundy: A Scottish Village in Marion County
- Knox College and the Fifth Lincoln-Douglas Debate
- Knox College: Lincoln Finds His Voice
- Knoxville: The County Seat That Lost a Courthouse Fight
- Ladd, Illinois: Born in a Board Meeting
- Lake Forest: Potawatomi Bluffs to Presbyterian Suburb
- Lake Forest: The First Planned Suburb
- Lebanon, Illinois: Illinois's Oldest College
- Lemont, Illinois
- Lexington, Illinois: Corn Belt Town on the Mother Road
- Lexington: Named Twice, for Two Different Places
- Libertyville: Five Names and One Famous Farmer-Statesman
- Lincoln Trail Homestead — Abraham Lincoln's First Illinois Home
- Lyndon Bridge
- Mahomet: A Connecticut Memory on the Illinois Prairie
- Manteno State Hospital
- Marion, Illinois: Born on a Pumpkin
- Markham: Named for a Railroad President
- Marshall: Lincoln's National Road Courtroom
- Matteson: The Governor's Railroad Junction
- Matthew T. Scott House, Chenoa
- Mattoon: Where Grant Got His Start and the Mad Gasser Struck
- McLean: Funk's Grove and the Maple Sirup Road
- McPike Mansion: Alton's Victorian Time Capsule
- Mendota: Sweet Corn Capital of the World
- Midlothian: The Golf Club That Became a Village
- Mill Shoals: Water Mill to Oil Boom
- Minooka, Illinois: Good Land at the Summit
- Mokena: The Mud Turtle Town
- Moline, Illinois: Where the Steel Plow Changed Everything
- Monee: Named for a Fur Trader's Daughter
- Monmouth College: Where the Sororities Were Born
- Mother Jones: Buried Among the Miners She Fought For
- Mound City, Illinois
- Mount Olive: Mother Jones Is Buried on Route Sixty-Six
- Naper Settlement, Naperville's Living History Museum
- Naperville, Illinois: Potawatomi Village to Silicon Prairie
- Naperville: From the DuPage River Frontier to Illinois's Fourth City
- National City: The Town Built to Dodge Taxes
- National Shrine of Saint Therese, Darien
- New Baden, Illinois: The Tornado That Built a Town
- Normal: Named for a School, Not a State of Mind
- O'Fallon, Illinois: Named at Auction
- Octave Chanute Aerospace Museum: A Base That Trained a Million Airmen
- Odell: One More Gas Station That Outlasted the Road
- Okawville: Illinois's Mineral Spring Town
- Old Cahokia Courthouse: Illinois's Oldest Building
- Old Main, Knox College
- Old Main, Knox College
- Olympia Fields: Four Majors in the Chicago Suburbs
- Onarga: The First Station in Iroquois County
- Osage and Quapaw Removal: The Nations Behind the Gateway
- Ottawa, Illinois: Where Lincoln Found His Voice
- Owen Lovejoy House
- Park Forest: Potawatomi Prairie to Postwar Suburb
- Paxton: Named for the Crystal Palace Man
- Peotone Mill: The Prairie Windmill
- Peru, Illinois: Where the Canal Met the River
- Plano Stone Church, RLDS World Headquarters on the Prairie
- Plow City
- Pontiac: Named for a Rebellion, Built on a Railroad
- Posen: The Polish Colony That Sold Twelve Thousand Lots
- Princeton, Illinois
- Princeton, Illinois: The Hampshire Colony
- Pulaski, Illinois
- Queen of the Holy Rosary: Italian Immigrants and a Wartime Vow
- Rantoul: Chanute Field and Seventy-Six Years of Air Force Training
- Red Covered Bridge
- Red Covered Bridge: Illinois' Oldest
- Rochelle Railroad Park: The Busiest Diamond in America
- Ronald Reagan Boyhood Home, Dixon
- Ryan Round Barn
- Sadorus: Champaign County's First
- Salem: Birthplace of the Great Commoner
- Sandwich and the Fair That Never Stopped
- Sandwich City Hall and Opera House
- Scott Air Force Base
- Sheffield, Illinois: Built by the Railroad Builders
- Sigel: The General Who Rallied German America
- Six Flags Great America
- Slovenian Women's Union: An Immigrant Institution
- Spillertown: Named for an 1817 Settler
- Starved Rock: La Salle's Fort and a Legend in Stone
- Teutopolis: City of the Germans
- Teutopolis: The German Colony on the National Road
- The City Under the City: Cahokia at Its Peak
- The Farnsworth House
- The Garden of the Gods: Shawnee National Forest and the Southern Illinois Confederacy
- The Gateway Arch
- The Gateway Arch and What It Does Not Say
- The House on the Bluff
- The Morton Arboretum
- The Nachusa House, Dixon
- The Oughton House of Dwight
- The Plum River Raid
- The President: Last of the Sidewheelers
- The Rock Formations and the Removal Road: Shawnee's Two Stories
- The Rondout Train Robbery
- The Vrooman Mansion: Lincoln's Friends and a War Garden Crusade
- Tilton: Named for Lincoln's Railroad Friend
- Tinley Park: From New Bremen to the Suburbs
- Troy, Illinois
- Tuscola: Broom Corn Capital
- Ullin, Illinois
- Ulysses S. Grant Home
- Underground Railroad: The Jan Ton Farm
- Urbana, Illinois
- Vandalia State House: Where Lincoln Started and Illinois Lost Its Capital
- Vandalia: Illinois's Forgotten Capital
- War of 1812 Monument: Macomb and MacDonough
- Washington Park, Illinois: The Village That Tried to Go Bankrupt Twice
- West City, Illinois
- Wilmington: The Island City on the Kankakee
- Wood River Massacre, July Eighteen Fourteen
- Woodhull: A Village Named for Its Founder
- Woodlawn, Illinois: A Railroad Village on Two Lines
- Wyanet, Illinois: A Town That Kept Changing Its Name