500 BC-900 AD                   

Woodlands Indians develop maize build villages and burial Mounds

1769

Illinois Indian tribes are trapped and starved near Fort St. Louis –now known as Starved Rock’

1818 

1837                                     

Chicago becomes a city (population 4000), John Deere develops self scouring steel plow

1838                                  

1839                                     

1847                                  

1848                                  

Second Constitution of Illinois ratified. Chicago Board of Trade organized .Illinois and Michigan Canal completed

1851                                     

Illinois Central Railroad is incorporated.  ICRR is given every other section of land on each side of the road as an incentive to build.   They sell it to settlers and were able to build the railroad.

1856                                     

First railroad bridge across the Mississippi is completed  between Rock Island and Davenport, Iowa.

1867                                  

Illinois Industrial University established (later University of  Illinois)

1870                                  

Third Constitution of Illinois ratified Great Chicago fire. Over 18,000 buildings destroyed with losses of $200 million

1873                                    

Joseph Glidden of DeKalb develops barbed wire fencing, patented in 1874.

1886                                                                     

Haymarket Square bombing and riot in Chicago during a labor rally.

1904                                  

The Jungle by Upton Sincair published, leads to the Pure  Food and Drug act 2 years later.

1922                                  

A.E. Staley opens first commercial soybean-processing plant in Decatur.

1941                                  

Work begins on mass production of Penicillin at the USDA Ag Research Center in Peoria.  Mass production for the war Effort will be complete by 1944.

1966                                     

Illinois for the first time leads the nation in the export of agricultural and manufactured products.

1980                                                                     

 Illinois native John Block named US Secretary of  Agriculture

1986                                                                     

 Federal Environmental Regulations approved encouraging Ethanol Use.

1993                                  

Worst floods in state’s history ravage western and southern Illinois covering 500,000 acres and causing $1.5 billion in crop and property damage.