Chicago, Illinois - American Guide Series on Waymarking.com

CHICAGO (598 alt., 3,376,438 pop.), vibrant, noisy, every inch alive, is the youngest of the world's great cities and has the optimism, the exuberant and often rather self-assertive pride of youth. But there is more than youthful swagger - there is a legitimate sense of triumph for achievements in the past, a boundless self-confidence as it faces the future, in the challenging ring of its civic motto, I WILL!

Gargantuan alike in size and rate of growth, the New World's second largest metropolis, the seventh largest on the globe, "Stormy, husky, brawling, City of Big Shoulders..." it lies at the point where the long finger of Lake Michigan pushes deep into the continent through the North woods and touches the fertile open prairie, the granary and stock farm of the Nation. Of that contact Chicago was born.

Toward the blue waters of the lake, fringed with a green ribbon of parks, Chicago presents its most impressive front. South from Evanston to the Indiana line, in a 25-mile arc, the lake front is lined with many of its finer mansions and apartment hotels; in and around the Loop, rising high above the great museums housed in vast marble piles, looms a serrated mass of towers, spires, shafts, and huge cubes, a jagged mountain range of brick, stone, steel, concrete, and glass.

Chicago has moved down to being the third largest city in the United States with a much smaller population than it had in 1939 when the guide was published (pop. in 2006: 2,833,321). The population of the greater metropolitan area is 9.5 million.

The city is still vibrant and full of swagger. Famous architecture continues to be built in the city and the "fringe of green" parks continues to lengthen with the addition of Millenium park in the late 1990's. The city attracts 33 million tourists annually with its array of world class museums and upscale shopping.

Coordinates are given for Buckingham Fountain in Grant Park. This park and its museums are the cultural center of the city and a great place for newcomers to start their visit.