DIXON, a city of northern Illinois, U.S.A., on the Rock river and the Lincoln highway, 98m. W. of Chicago; the county seat of Lee county. It is served by the Chicago and North Western and the Illinois Central railways.
The population was 8,191 in 1920 (91% native white), and was 9,908 in 1930 by the Federal census. Dixon is the centre of a rich farming region, and has a number of manufacturing industries, for which the river supplies power.
It was laid out in 1835 by John Dixon (1784-1876), the first white settler in the county, and was chartered as a city in 1859. In 1833, at the close of the Black Hawk War, Jefferson Davis, Zachary Taylor and Abraham Lincoln were comrades in the old block-house that stood near the northern end of the present bridge across the river.