LOCATION AND GROWTH OF CITIES Determining factors.—Illinois possesses places which had military importance during the periods of exploration, national determination, and early settlement. Starved Rock, rising abruptly from the Illinois River and the surrounding small valleys, was the site of Fort St. Louis, about which La Salle and his followers gathered a large Indian population. Fort Massac at Metropolis commanded the approach of the Ohio River from both directions. Fort Chartres in the northwest corner of Randolph County, on the 1100(1 plain of the Missis sippi, was once the site of great social and military activity, but clue to changes in the river channel the remnants of the old fort are now more than a mile from the river, and the unin structed traveler along river or highway passes the locality unaware of the importance the site had in the early history of the Illinois country. Fort Dearborn on the Chicago River guarded the Lake Michigan entrance to the Illinois country. The sites of three of these military posts arc now preserved as state parks. They arc in the open country. The site of Fort Dearborn has become the center of a great commercial metropolis, so crowded with mercantile establishments that the historic site of the old fort is marked only by a marble tablet attached to one of the buildings. Military advan tage alone does not insure the location and growth of a great city.
Political forces have operated in the location and growth of Illinois cities to some extent. Congress, at the request of the state legislature, granted public land on the Kaskaskia River as a site for a new state capital. Vandalia in Fayette County was established in 1819 as a result of this legislative action. Twenty years later, by vote of the state legislature, the capital was removed to Springfield. While Springfield was not established by this action, its future importance and growth were greatly enhanced thereby.
The bitter contests waged in a number of Illinois counties, sometimes extending over a long period of years, for the pos session of the county seat illustrates the fact that political forces operate to mold the development and growth of cities. ProfessorBuck illustrates this point as follows in Illinois in 1818: Each of the fifteen counties, with the exception of Franklin, had a county seat; but these towns as a rule contained little more than a court house, jail, and tavern, and possibly a general store. That they depended for their existence on the county business is evident from the number of them which failed to survive the loss of their position as county seat: Pal myra, Brownsville, Covington, Perryville, and even Kaskaskia, are now to he found only in the records of the past.
It does not follow that a place selected as a political center has an assured future.
Religious zeal has been the occasion of the location and growth of at least two Illinois cities of importance. Nauvoo, Hancock County, on the Mississippi River, was a small village of but a few houses prior to 1840. It was then selected by the Mormons as a location for a settlement. Within four years Nauvoo had a population of 16,000. In 1846 the Mormons left Nauvoo and migrated to Utah, where they founded Salt Lake City. The population of Nauvoo in 1910 was 1,020. Zion City, Lake County, on the shore of Lake Michigan, was founded by John Alexander Dowie and his followers in 1902. Its population in 1910 was 4,789.
While military, political, and religious forces have played a part in the location and growth of a few Illinois cities, the great compelling factors in the establishment and development of centers of population in Illinois, as elsewhere in the world, are geographic and economic. These economic forces are complex in their nature and operation. They involve oppor tunities for collecting the products of the locality and forward ing them to market; for securing and distributing supplies to the community; for obtaining raw materials and fuel or power for manufacture; for marketing the manufactured product. A simple and comprehensive statement of the opera tion of these economic forces is the following: Population and wealth tend to collect wherever there is a break in trans portation.' Breaks in transportation—Cahokia and Kaskaskia, the first permanent settlements in Illinois, were made where there were breaks in transportation between river and land. Both were located so that the pioneers could travel readily either by land or by water. Changes in the river channel wrought impor tant changes for both settlements. Cahokia is now well back on the flood plain because of the deposition of sediment. Its population in 1010 was 150. The site of Kaskaskia has been washed away by the current of the Mississippi. East St. Louis, only four miles north of Cahokia, is located at the best river crossing from Illinois to St. Louis and it has become a flourishing city. Peoria, located at the best place on the Illinois River, first for a ford, then for wagon and railroad bridges, led to the convergence of wagon roads and railroads from both sides of the river. Peru and La Salle have grown up at the break between river and canal transportation of pioneer days. Chicago is found at the break between canal and lake transportation; between lake and railroad; and between railroad and railroad, for not a railroad passes through Chicago; it is the terminus of every railroad that enters. It is thus a railroad focus, rather than simply a railroad center.