The String Of Cities Inside Chicago That NOBODY KNOWS Exists

Chicago is one of the largest cities in the U.S. and there are plenty of small and large suburbs, each of which has their own stories and histories. Looking at that history, the very old cities were built either off the coast or off the rivers. You've got the Des Plaines River going down the heart of the metro, but more importantly, you've got the topic of today's video. I'm here at the headwaters of the Fox River in Wisconsin. Now here, this doesn't really look like anything significant, but this is the river that serves one of the most underrated and interesting little strings of cities that you'll find in the United States. I think nobody really talks about it and it's a very interesting topic of conversation. Now the headwaters are north of here but this is a fun little area that I found up right near Menominee Falls in Wisconsin where you actually find the headwaters of this river. It goes a lot farther down obviously as I'll talk about in this video but it's fun to see where it starts. Obviously this is just a little suburban area. These cities go down the river starting from all the way up here and working its way through the west end of the metro. Importantly, they weren't always considered to be part of Chicago, and that's what I wanted to talk about today. Before we get into it though, I wanted to quickly ask if you'd subscribe to support the channel and help fund future trips. I love traveling for videos, it's my favorite part of the channel, and the more growth we get from it, the more I can do it. Thank you so much. The main story at play here comes from the history of Chicago, so let's look at their growth patterns. Let's pretend it's 1950, and we look at kind of what the city looks like. The skyline obviously looked nothing like what we see today, but most importantly, there were 5.4 million residents in the metropolitan area, and 4.5 million of those residents were within Cook County. That basically means they were within the main city, and what this tells me is that this was still just right before the start of suburbanization. Suburbanization began with the interstate system in the 50s, where transportation into the city from longer distances became possible, and so people wanted to live farther from downtown. towns. Cities exploded, and by 1980, where this satellite imagery is from, the Chicago Metro had 7.8 million people. What you'll notice is this gap right here. This is between the now suburbanizing Chicago metropolitan area and the Fox Valley, so let's shift over there and look at that. The Fox River begins up near Milwaukee, and it serves cities like Waukesha and Burlington, Wisconsin. In regards to it as either a metro area or a mini-megalopolis, it includes only those in Illinois that create this edge of the metropolitan area in Chicago. So that's what I'll be talking about today. We have Fox Lake, McHenry, Algonquin, Elgin, St. Charles, Batavia, Aurora, and it begins puttering out around Oswego. In 1980, there was a gap between these cities and the Chicago metro. Growing with the city only, they all have their own histories and identities from all the way back in the 1830s, when every single one of the aforementioned cities were settled. Now, continuing on from 1980, this empty area was still serving as a form of barrier that helped keep the identity of these outer cities. But the Chicago Metro grew to 9.1 million people by 2000, and that undeveloped area was slowly developed. Now, present day, there's no barrier. To any normal person, there's no difference between Aurora and any other Chicago suburb. I feel we've forgotten that an area that is very unique and has its own identity is different from any old Chicago suburb. Some of these cities have real downtowns and urban areas, so I feel it's important to go city to city and look at them and find appreciation in that. If this were a metropolitan area, and I'll just pretend and refer to it as such for my argument in this video, the Illinois population would be 1.08 million residents, a very significant amount. They have a main focus on the manufacturing industry historically, as much of the Chicago metro does, meaning they dealt with rust belt issues, although that was offset by the suburban growth. Then earlier on, it was mill-related, with a deep focus on the Fox River, and you see all of these little economic tidbits squeak through into the present-day identity. Beginning with Fox Lake, I didn't get a chance to visit this community, but it has a population of 10.9 thousand, and it's a major boating city. There are over 20,000 boats registered to these lakes here meaning it's mostly important for its water usage people basically just have second homes here and if your first home is here too let's just say you probably own a kayak but let's move on to where i did visit all right first city mchenry mchenry is a clear river town it was developed off of that crossing over the river it's a little bit more upscale and it's known for a lot of lake homes and stuff in this area you can see i'm on the river walk right Now that's a big thing that this city has, and it shows that orientation towards the river. It has a population of 27,000, but before suburbanization, it was only around 2,000 residents, which is why we see a downtown matching that of a very small Midwest town, not a normal Chicago suburb where you'd expect to see a strode and a bunch of gas stations. Moving south past Crystal Lake, then, this is where we see those big suburban developments. But we get to our next city. The next city, Algonquin, is a really fun example for this video. it was originally a very small town very disconnected from Chicago but this one was completely taken over by suburban growth you see large new suburbs in this area that's a lot of what's going on now is the growth that we see here it's been completely taken over by Chicago residents while formerly it was a place where Chicago residents would go for their summer home their lake home on the river another very nice place there's a nice little downtown but again that downtown is very small you know the actual city itself does not have a ton of influence it's just that suburban growth. The population of Algonquin is 29,000 and by household income this one is actually the richest of any of the Fox Valley cities. The population is now stagnant since suburban growth passed through it but back in 1950 it also had a population of just 1.2 thousand people. Next city is Elgin. Elgin is a large manufacturing city a very important industrial city it's the second largest in the Fox River area. Now apparently I've just walked to the entire downtown being closed for the largest horror festival in the midwest so that's pretty cool not actually Elgin that's not cool i'm trying to explore for my video guys anyway yeah this is a very important city and it's one of the largest manufacturing areas in the United States that's all i got apparently that's it it has a population of 114,000 and it's one of those cities that did have a real urban influence of its own before it was swallowed up by Chicago with a population of 44,000 in 1950, you see plenty of older neighborhoods around the downtown and the real buildings are here as well. It's also a nice little downtown with many factories they've changed a bit in recent decades, but luckily that suburban growth has offset it and the population growth has continued. Next city we're in is St. Charles and this is pretty clearly the most upscale. It has a large downtown, a big shopping area with a lot of places to go. It's got a pretty large riverfront area. It's got shops on both sides of the river. We even parked in a parking ramp and that tells you that people go here to visit apparently not at all it's Saturday i though because there's nowhere open for lunch we ended up at Riverside Pizza and Pub since that was actually open but that's unimportant to our story St. Charles has a population of 33,000 and it is continuing to grow pretty steadily as i said it's also one of the more upscale cities in the region next city is Batavia this is another hydropower town it benefited off of the river specifically growing because of mills and stuff here's a big manufacturing area and it has a nice little downtown street made of bricks i'm a little unimpressed i'm not gonna lie no disrespect could have been a little better but still just a nice little local area that i like a lot this downtown has a bit less influence it gives you that small town feel but the population is 26,000 and actually the population in 1950 was 5.8,000 which leads you to see it swings a bit below its weight in the downtown regard nothing wrong with that though batavia is also home to the corporate headquarters of Aldi a major grocery store chain. That place rocks if you know you know. Now I'm here in Aurora Chicago now this one needs no introduction it's the major regional center of this area and that's where a lot of the population comes from. It was a major manufacturing area and it is nicknamed the city of lights. It was the first city in the world or America to use electric lights to light their streets. The highest poverty rate in the area at 9.8 percent but this was the regional center of the Fox Valley City. It has a downtown with a similar size to that of Elgin, but I will say despite the amount of stuff going on here, there's not actually a ton of people out. It's a Saturday evening and I'm really not seeing that many people actually on the streets around here besides this theater here that seems to have something going on tonight. The population, as I said, was 180,000 people and this is the second most populous city in all of Illinois, which is where you have to understand that it does have some pretty major urban influence. It feels very separate from Chicago despite me just accidentally calling it Aurora Chicago. This high population though does mean it's declining majorly in population because it's in Illinois and that's happening everywhere in this state. It lost 17,000 residents between the last two censuses. And finally we're in Oswego and instead of going to the downtown area I actually just went to a random suburban neighborhood with the intention of showing that this town is at the very edge of the suburban growth the edge of the metropolitan area which what that means is that this is the area that's going to experience the most suburban growth right now. This municipality went from 3,000 residents all the way up to well over 20,000 residents just in the past few censuses because we've seen this growth and a lot of it is just suburbs on the outside of this municipality and it's growing very quickly. If you look at the satellite growth here we see this for sure and the population is now pushing down closer to Yorkville which has maybe become the new edge of the metro in a way but we zoom back out and again look at the entire metro now you know that all of these cities developed separately from Chicago yet on a map it looks like they're the same thing all in all it's simply important to draw appreciation to situations like this if you don't think what Keegan and Evanston have their own unique identities you're wrong but this is something you find all across America if you look closely into their metro area. Not all suburbs are the same. Thanks for watching. Thank you so much to the members this week. I really appreciate you guys. If you want to become a member, the link is down in the description below. All the money goes straight to my savings so we can go and do more trips just like this. I really appreciate it. Thank you.