Metropolitan Chicago Reference Map

Col. Robert R. McCormick, editor and publisher of the Chicago Tribune for most of the first half of the twentieth century, usually gets credit for putting “Chicagoland” into common parlance. In McCormick's time, it referred to the city and its grain, timber, and livestock hinterlands covering parts of five states (Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Iowa), all of which were served by rail delivery of the colonel's newspaper. Later in the century it came to mean a smaller, denser area of city and suburbs in three states stretching from northern Indiana to southern Wisconsin.

Jack W. Fuller