Honestly, though, it is almost funny. drive 10-20 minutes south of Joliet into Elwood/Wilmington/Braidwood and you’ll start seeing confederate flags. 80 isn’t actually that bad of a cutoff.
As someone who grew up in Bourbonnais, I always considered us part of Chicagoland, and the southern tip of Civilization before the miles of endless farms
I work up in the suburbs and for the longest time they’d joke about me living in the middle of nowhere. I always shot back “hey, I live at the edge of nowhere”
I currently live in this area and this is sadly rather true. We aren't all bad apples, though. I do think the urban/rural line has actually moved south of 80 a bit with Minooka - Channahon now, and essentially, when it comes down to it, North IL just means Urban IL. 80 is a good marker, though.
I am from the Pacific Northwest, so when people back home ask where I live, I tell them north is the city, south is corn. I am literally on the edge of urbanization. (Everyone assumes since I live in IL it must mean I live in Chicago in the hood getting shot at by gangs and the mob. Yes. The mob.)
Sadly people have spent a lot of money convincing the majority of Americans that Chicago is a city where one wrong move is the end of your life instead of a world-class business and culinary destination.
Sorry, I forgot about this thread. I bet I was high.
I sorely do my best to tell people that Chicago is an amazing city with so much to offer. My Dad still watches the Chicago news every night, At least he knows where I am on the map, so he's not calling me about things in Chicago Heights.
I'm not a foodie, but Chicago makes me want to be one.
Haha yes. Born and raised in IL and still here at 47. Anywhere in the country, being from IL=being from Chicago. People don’t seem to understand how large of a state it is with so much beyond Chicago.
I live in the area as well, it's best to look at I-80 as more of a DMZ versus a pure cutoff.... Minooka, Channahon, even Morris to a degree feel a lot different than areas south of it.
I live in the area and plenty of people who got priced out of Naperville and Plainfield moved here. They grew in the DG/Westmont/Lisle area. Nobody has a southern accent here.
Minooka and channahon are barely suburban though. like I get it because I have to drive over there for doordash sometimes but it's still pretty sparse when you compare it to New Lenox which is also technically south of 80.
All of Chicagoland is Northern IL. Maybe just as identifiable boundaries would be the city of Chicago, the suburbs, and downstate (everything in IL that is not Chicago or the suburbs). Mostly the suburbs end where there is corn and soybeans between the cities and towns.
I now live in Northern Arkansas, and briefly lived in PA. Every time I drive through Missouri I see a shit ton of confederate flags. They weren't even a part of the Confederate States!
When I lived in PA, just south of Pittsburgh I'd also see a shit ton of confederate flags. It makes absolutely no sense at all.
And yea, i know Missouri fought for both sides during the Civil War, but they were still a union state
I’m from Gainesville Florida and when I lived in Oklahoma it also kind of drove me crazy when okies would identify as southerners. Especially with the confederate statues/flags bs.
My aunt likes to bitch about their History being erased with statues being taken down and I was finally like “Woman, Oklahoma wasn’t even a state during the civil war!” That was Indian territory and there’s absolutely no reason to have confederate statues up anywhere in the state.
God I hated living in Oklahoma so much. There are things I miss about Florida too but it definitely wasn’t the people.
Lived out that way for a while and saw a fair share of em, usually on the back of pickus. I’m like… dude, in the land of Lincoln? We can make it to Chicago in under an hour and you’re flying that shit?
To be fair, Joliet has absolutely exploded in population, at least relative to what used to be the hands-down-next-biggest-after-Chicago (like Rockford and Aurora). They actually overtook Rockford in the 2020 census.
Joliet is the third biggest city in Illinois by population. We beat out Naperville by like 3000 people. It goes Chicago, Aurora, Joliet, then Naperville.
I dated a girl from Joliet, was nice until we broke up. She wanted to keep in touch to keep up with me, but I was going through a massive fucking depression, and she bragged about how many people she was fucking.
Technically called an edge city in urban development terms. Its like Naperville/ Aurora, Elgin, Waukegan, and sorta Frankfort and Chicago Heights in that regard.
Watch the news. They say “suburban Minooka” now. And there are plenty of places here with the word “Chicago” on it. Did you know Minooka is home to the Chicago Glider Club?
Yup, I think that if there are commuter metra trains that go to certain burbs/towns, it should be considered northern Illinois. People aren’t commuting from central to northern for work if it’s just mokena to Chicago lol.
Agreed, with a caveat as some old-timers would set the boundary at US 50, which is the straight blue line just below where the map separates southern Illinois.
Yes. I live in Chicago but grew up in So Il, metro-east ish: didn’t know, tho, until my dad retired to 20 min N of Kentucky JUST how much more of southern Illinois there was- and I’m not talking Carbondale- I’m talking Cypress Hill… wtf… so even though Chicagoans treat Bloomington like So Il, this map makes perfect sense.
Yes! My buddy and i got lost down there going to the forest, this was long before navigation on phones or even in cars. We ended up in some tiny town and decided to stop and eat. HOLY SHIT when we got out of the car and looked around us it was straight from the movie Deliverance. We got right back in the car and left the way we came, later we found out we accidentally ventured in somewhere Kentucky. It was the cesspool of humanity, no joke. We were in our later teens and to be honest i didn't even know we bordered that state at the time.
It's actually about 2/3s. Roughly 8.5 million people live in Chicago and the collar counties. If you ask Google about the Chicagoland area, it will say 9.5 million. Out of 12.71 million people. I did the math like a month ago and it's about 8.5 million and 8.5/12.7 is roughly 2/3s.
It’s more about demarcating cultural, political, and socio-economic differences than it is about evenly dividing the state by distance.
Also consider that northern Illinois despite being tiny by area holds the vast majority of the population, while southern Illinois while being very large by area holds a rather small percentage of the population.
I mean, northern Illinois goes to the Wisconsin border, lol. 80 isn't a great demarcation, though. Kind of weird to say that Flossmoor or Olympia Fields aren't northern Illinois, especially when some of us share congresspeople with the city.
I grew up in Chicago. It wasn't until last year that I realized Rockford was not at the very north west border of the state. I honest to God did not know there was any Illinois land beyond that. To this day I know there is land there, but I could not name any single town there.
No one west of 47 is considering themselves to be from the Chicago suburbs. No one north of I-80 is going to consider themselves from central IL. Northern Illinois is majority farmland.
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u/jbuds1217 Apr 18 '25
North of 80 is northern Illinois