Aerial.America.S06E07.Illinois
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00:00There's nothing like soaring across its wide open skies, down the rows of corn that blanket
00:09its fields, and up and over the pinnacles of its awe-inspiring towers, Illinois has
00:16always been a land of hope and great change.
00:20It was here where a mysterious ancient people built a city more populated than London.
00:26It's where a blacksmith named John Deere invented a way to transform tough prairie
00:30soil into fields of plenty.
00:34And it's where millions fled during the Great Migration, including a guitarist from Mississippi
00:40named Muddy Waters.
00:42The story of Illinois is one of the most colorful in the nation.
00:47It was in this Midwestern state that the founder of the Mormon faith was murdered in cold blood.
00:53Where the legendary Indian leader, Black Hawk, was forced into exile.
00:58And where mob boss Al Capone turned America's prohibition into his personal empire of organized
01:06crime.
01:09It's always been one of the nation's most ambitious states, with its great switching
01:13yards, hubs for coal and steel, daring engineering marvels, and the house that Jordan built,
01:22home of the Chicago Bulls.
01:26This is the powerful story of Illinois.
01:52There's no better way to understand the true spirit of Illinois than to understand how
02:09the skyline of the city of Chicago was born.
02:13How it managed to rise from the ashes and touch the sky after one of the most devastating
02:18tragedies ever to befall a U.S. city.
02:22A tragedy known as the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
02:30It started on October 8th in the southwest of Chicago, in a barn at what is now 137 DeKoven
02:36Street.
02:39High winds from the southwest fanned the flames and pushed the fire through the city towards
02:44Lake Michigan.
02:46By the time rain showers finally put the fire out, almost two days later, over four square
02:52miles of the city had been burned to the ground.
02:55More than 17,000 buildings were destroyed, 90,000 residents were homeless, and close
03:01to 300 were dead.
03:05The Great Chicago Fire had started at 9 p.m., which is one reason the tragedy has been called
03:10the Night America Burned.
03:14Some say that even before the bricks stopped smoking, the people of Chicago vowed to come
03:18back, even bigger than before.
03:24And that's just what they did.
03:27Chicago's Great Fire was the spark that led to brilliant innovations in the skyscraper
03:32and the creation of one of the most dazzling skylines in the world.
03:38What first kicked off Chicago's vertical boom was land prices.
03:43Almost immediately after the Great Chicago Fire, the cost of land in the city skyrocketed
03:48as builders vied for space.
03:51Those who did have land wanted to build the tallest structures they could.
03:55It just so happened that new building materials were about to make that possible.
03:59The one that had the biggest impact was structural steel.
04:03It allowed engineers to design taller than ever before by using a skeleton of steel instead
04:09of thick walls of stone.
04:11It also enabled architects to revolutionize the way buildings looked.
04:16The interior steel skeleton made it possible to use large plate glass windows on the outside,
04:22which quickly became the norm.
04:24When German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe arrived in Chicago just before World
04:28War II to teach here at the Illinois Institute of Technology, he pushed the use of glass
04:33and steel in skyscrapers even further.
04:37His students went on to design some of Chicago's most important structures, including Lake
04:41Point Tower, with its signature curving facade.
04:47But steel was also used to reinforce concrete in new ways.
04:52When they were built, these corncob-looking towers, known as Marina City, were the tallest
04:57buildings made from reinforced concrete in the world.
05:00They were also the highest residential buildings ever built and the first to be constructed
05:05with tower cranes that are now a common sight on just about every construction project around
05:10the globe.
05:14The Chicago skyline is basically the product of a series of daring experiments in engineering
05:19and design.
05:21The giant X's on the outside of the city's famous John Hancock Center are a perfect example.
05:27While they aren't just for decoration, this 100-story tower is actually engineered as
05:32a giant steel tube.
05:34Its rigid exterior walls are what hold it up.
05:37It's an engineering design called an exoskeleton and was developed by a Bangladeshi-born engineer
05:42named Fazlur Khan.
05:44The John Hancock Center's distinctive diagonal braces help make the tube more rigid.
05:50They also create more usable space on each floor, since there's no need for heavy structural
05:55supports on the inside.
05:58It was the second tallest building ever built, when it was completed in 1969.
06:04The innovative engineering behind it has since been used to build many other skyscrapers
06:08around the world, including the crown jewel of Chicago's skyline, the Willis Tower.
06:17It shoots up more than a quarter of a mile into the sky.
06:21When it was completed in 1973, it was called the Sears Tower and was the tallest building
06:26in the world.
06:28It later lost that title, but maintained its place as the highest structure in the U.S.
06:33until 2014, when New York City's One World Trade Center opened its doors and topped the
06:38Willis Tower by almost 50 feet.
06:41Chicago is not the ideal place to build a megastructure like this one.
06:46The ground under this city is actually soft clay, which caused some early buildings here
06:51to sink in the mud.
06:53Chicago's City Hall was one of them, and had to be torn down.
06:57But architects and engineers here were persistent.
07:00By the time the Willis Tower was built, they knew they had to drill more than 100 piles
07:05deep down through the clay until they hit bedrock, so the towers above would have something
07:11solid to rest on, and so they wouldn't topple over.
07:15The Willis Tower was also constructed with a tubular design.
07:19But instead of just being one very tall tube, it was engineered as nine different tubes
07:24bundled together.
07:26It's what gives the Willis Tower its unique block-like shape.
07:29The center and largest tube is the tallest.
07:32One reason it gets narrower as it rises is so there's less surface area at higher elevations
07:37that could make the structure unstable in high winds.
07:41But still, on stormy days in the windy city of Chicago, the highest floors of the Willis
07:46Tower can sway as much as three feet.
07:50And that's another reason why stepping out into one of its skyboxes on the 103rd floor
07:55is such a thrill.
07:59One thing that makes Chicago a city unlike any other in the nation is how it suddenly
08:03rises from a very flat landscape.
08:07Out to the west, beyond Chicago's skyscrapers, there are almost no distinctive shapes on
08:12the horizon.
08:14No mountains, no hills, almost no natural forms at all.
08:19Illinois is one of the flattest states in the nation.
08:22Stand in the middle of it, and it's possible to imagine that the world itself is actually
08:26flat.
08:27In fact, Illinois is the second flattest state after Florida.
08:32It got that way over millennia, thanks to massive glaciers that once covered almost
08:3785% of the state.
08:40They succeeded in completely leveling Illinois' once hilly terrain.
08:45But the slow-moving ice also carried with it great riches.
08:49When they finally retreated almost 10,000 years ago, they left behind mineral deposits
08:55and a healthy layer of topsoil.
08:58That's one reason Illinois now has more than 76,000 farms, and why they can produce 7%
09:05of all U.S. agricultural exports, from soybeans, to wheat, to the king of all Illinois crops,
09:13corn.
09:14Illinois is the second biggest producer of corn in the nation, after Iowa.
09:19For many farmers here, 2014 was their best year on record.
09:24Cornfields produce more than 200 bushels an acre.
09:28But not all Illinois farmers harvest all the corn they grow.
09:32Some turn it into art.
09:36This is not any old corn maze.
09:38It's one of the largest corn mazes in the world.
09:43This year it celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Beatles' first album.
09:48It lies on the Richardson's family farm.
09:51To create this elaborate design, they have to plant the corn evenly across the field,
09:56instead of in rows.
09:58They hire corn maze artist Sean Stallworthy, who first creates a design on a computer.
10:03Then, when the corn is 12 inches high, Stallworthy cuts the design into the field using a tractor
10:09armed with GPS.
10:11It's an amazingly precise technique.
10:14On the ground, it's hard to know which beetle is which, but from the air, it's easy to spot
10:19Ringo, George, John, and Paul.
10:24Today, farms like the Richardson's cover almost 80% of the state.
10:29But before settlers arrived here, about 60% of Illinois was covered with prairie that
10:33was very hard to farm.
10:35When the glaciers retreated, they left behind a nutrient-rich land.
10:39But they also packed the soil here so densely that settlers struggled to drive their plows
10:44through Illinois' tough prairie soil.
10:47In 1837, a blacksmith named John Deere decided to find a solution.
10:53Deere was living in this simple house here in the town of Grandeteur when he decided
10:57to try and design a new plow that would be better suited to Illinois' hard prairie soil.
11:03In his small blacksmith shop out back, he made a plow with polished steel instead of
11:08cast iron.
11:10The polishing of the steel made it slippery so that it could cut through the soil and
11:15not stick to it.
11:16The John Deere steel plow worked and radically improved cultivation across Illinois.
11:23It also spawned a whole series of other inventions and machines that still work Illinois' fields
11:28today.
11:33There's nothing like seeing the city of Chicago on the horizon.
11:38It shoots up from Illinois' flat plains like the outline of a futuristic metropolis.
11:43The tops of its buildings actually touch the sky.
11:48But this isn't the first time that man-made structures in Illinois have inspired awe.
11:54More than a thousand years ago, on a site in what's now the southwest corner of Illinois,
12:00an ancient people were building skyward, but without the benefit of modern engineers, steel
12:06and glass.
12:07They used earth instead, which is why they were known as mound builders.
12:13These giant earthworks served as the foundations of what were likely some of the tallest standing
12:18structures in North America.
12:20They belonged to a mysterious and long-lost civilization known as the Mississippian culture.
12:27Their settlements once stretched from the Great Lakes region all the way down to the
12:31Gulf of Mexico and as far west as the Great Plains.
12:35But the Mississippians' largest city was here in Illinois.
12:39It's a site now known as the Cahokia Mounds.
12:44Archaeologists believe that there were once 120 mounds here, spread over six square miles.
12:49Building them required moving 55 million cubic feet of earth by hand in woven baskets.
12:55A fence like this one once surrounded the city, probably for protection against invaders.
13:01In the center is the largest known prehistoric earthwork in the Western Hemisphere.
13:06It's called Monk's Mound and forms the shape of a trapezoid.
13:11No one knows for sure what role these mounds played in the lives of the Mississippians,
13:16but those who were permitted to climb to the top of Monk's Mound would have looked out
13:20over a bustling city of up to 20,000 people.
13:24By the year 1250, it was more populated than the city of London.
13:30Radiating out from the center were fields and smaller villages with smaller mounds.
13:35But by 1400, the people living here were gone.
13:39No one knows what happened to the great Mississippian mound builders.
13:43They simply vanished.
13:45French explorers and fur traders were the first Europeans to paddle down the Mississippi
13:49River.
13:50They began building a series of forts along the river to protect themselves and their
13:54trading interests.
13:56The most important one stood on the Mississippi's eastern bank, in what's now Illinois.
14:04The first French fort here was made of wood and was commanded by a man named Major Pierre
14:09d'Artiguette.
14:10In 1735, he led a campaign to subdue members of the Chickasaw tribe downriver.
14:17But the tribe managed to take him and more than 15 other Frenchmen hostage.
14:24The Chickasaw then tied them to stakes and burned them all slowly to death.
14:29He was sent a message to the French about infringing on Chickasaw land.
14:34It was one reason why the French decided to build a bigger and even better fort here in
14:38the 1750s.
14:40To keep the Indians at bay and the British from seizing control of the Mississippi Valley.
14:46France spent one million dollars building Fort du Chart out of stone.
14:52It had its own powder magazine where gunpowder and weapons could be stockpiled.
14:57It earned praise from a member of the Royal British Engineers in 1766 who called it the
15:02best built fort in North America.
15:05The British finally did take control of the region and the fort.
15:09By the 1850s, one of the great fortifications of the colonial age had fallen into ruin.
15:16Thanks to its low position near the often flooded Mississippi, it has since been reconstructed.
15:27Every fall, thousands of American white pelicans soar through the middle Mississippi Valley
15:33on their annual migration south.
15:37During the summers, these birds live in the northern U.S. and southern Canada.
15:42But every October, they head to the Gulf of Mexico for the winter.
15:47Many use the Mississippi River Valley to get there, which means they fly right past the
15:53twin cities of St. Louis, Missouri and East St. Louis, Illinois.
15:58On the Missouri side is the state's famous Gateway Arch.
16:01When it was designed by architect Eero Saarinen in 1947, he also envisioned a park on the
16:07Illinois side of the river in East St. Louis to connect the two sister cities.
16:12The park never got built, so a prominent local lawyer decided to complete Saarinen's original
16:18vision and create something for his city to be proud of.
16:22He bought up land and then gave East St. Louis a towering landmark of its own, a giant geyser
16:34that shoots water as high as 630 feet into the air, the same height as the St. Louis
16:40Arch.
16:41Today, it's the highest fountain in the United States.
16:48The four smaller fountains at its base represent the four rivers that join near East St. Louis,
16:54the Mississippi, the Missouri, the Meramec and the Illinois.
17:08Even before bridges were built over the Mississippi, East St. Louis was a boomtown, though that's
17:14hard to believe today from the air.
17:18Most of the stockyards, steel plants and chemical factories that turned East St. Louis into
17:22the Pittsburgh of the West are now closed and gone.
17:27The Great Depression sent this city into a tailspin that continued after World War II.
17:34Starting in the 1960s, there were fewer jobs, fewer people, and with a declining tax base,
17:40East St. Louis fell on very hard times.
17:44That's when Jackie Joyner Kersey was born in 1962.
17:49She grew up in a small house across the street from the Mary E. Brown Community Center with
17:53its basketball-shaped roof.
17:55It was here where she discovered her athletic talent and started a journey that would earn
18:00her the title of the greatest female athlete of the 20th century.
18:04For college, Jackie Joyner went to UCLA, and then from there, she competed in four Summer
18:09Olympics where she won six medals, three of them gold.
18:14She never forgot her hometown of East St. Louis.
18:18When the community center where she got her start closed, she spearheaded the building
18:22of a new one.
18:24Today, the Jackie Joyner Kersey Center offers hope to kids in East St. Louis that they too
18:31can live their dreams.
18:35And that's why many in Illinois also come here to study at the University of Illinois
18:40in Urbana-Champaign.
18:42It's home to the Fighting Illini, the University of Illinois' football team.
18:47A game played here in 1924 against Michigan went down in history for the remarkable runs
18:52of a player named Red Grange.
18:56In 21 carries, he managed to run 402 yards, which earned him the nickname the Galloping
19:02Ghost.
19:04The Fighting Illini get their name from the Illiniwek tribes, after which the state of
19:08Illinois is named.
19:10For years, the mascot of the Fighting Illini was an Indian chief who pranced across the
19:14field at halftime, but he was retired in 2007 out of sensitivity to the descendants of the
19:20Native Americans who once lived on the prairies where the stadium now stands.
19:24But the University of Illinois is about much more than sports.
19:30It excels in many fields, including information science, engineering, architecture, and art.
19:37Its graduates include film critic Roger Ebert, director Ang Lee, and sculptor Loretto Taft.
19:44One of Taft's most famous works still stands tall over Illinois' Rock River.
19:50Arms crossed, gazing out over his former land, is a figure known as the Eternal Indian.
19:57A light on his chest illuminates his face against the trees at night.
20:05Taft's 48-foot-high sculpture was completed in 1911 as a tribute to all the Native Americans
20:10who once called Illinois home.
20:15Over time, it's come to be associated with a Sauk leader known as Black Hawk.
20:21The battles he and his people fought with the U.S. government to keep their land here
20:25on the Rock River are famously known as the Black Hawk War.
20:30One of the most important battles happened here, in the state's northwest corner, near
20:34the present-day city of Galena.
20:37In the 1820s, Galena boomed when lead was discovered in the region.
20:42Other settlements were soon established nearby, including one at a place called Apple River.
20:52In the spring of 1829, members of the Sauk and Fox tribes returned from their winter
20:58hunts to discover that the miners had taken over their villages.
21:02The tribes were forced to resettle on land on the west side of the Mississippi.
21:08But in 1832, Black Hawk and hundreds of members of the tribes crossed back over the Mississippi
21:14to try to reoccupy their land.
21:18When miners in Apple River heard the news, they raced to build a fortified wall around
21:22their cabins for protection.
21:26Their Apple River fort has since been reconstructed.
21:32On June 24, 1832, Black Hawk and about 200 warriors arrived and then attacked the fort.
21:39But the miners and their wives fired back, and after 45 minutes, Black Hawk decided to
21:45give up, thinking he was outgunned.
21:50Almost six weeks later, the chief and his people suffered a final horrifying defeat
21:55when U.S. forces chased them into the waters of the Mississippi and then fired on them
21:59at will, slaughtering hundreds of their men, women, and children in what came to be known
22:04as the Bad Axe Massacre.
22:07Black Hawk was one of the few survivors, and later died of illness in Iowa.
22:13Today, Laredo Taft's sculpture stands as an impressive reminder of what happened to
22:20Black Hawk and his people here in western Illinois.
22:26In his final speech before he died, Black Hawk said,
22:29Rock River was beautiful country.
22:33I loved my towns, my cornfields, and the home of my people.
22:38It is yours now.
22:40Keep it as we did.
22:44The year after the Black Hawk War ended, the city of Chicago was incorporated on the shores
22:49of Lake Michigan, and Illinois was about to undergo its transformation from a series of
22:55frontier outposts to one of the most powerful states in the nation.
23:02One frontiersman who helped drive that transformation was a young Illinois resident named Abraham Lincoln,
23:09which is why Illinois proudly calls itself the Land of Lincoln.
23:13At the age of 23, Lincoln served in the Black Hawk War, but never saw any action.
23:19In July 1832, he returned to his home in the town of New Salem.
23:25That town is now known as Lincoln's New Salem Historic Site.
23:30New Salem's old frontier buildings have since been reconstructed, including two small stores
23:37which Lincoln co-owned and ran.
23:40The stores weren't much of a success, and Lincoln found himself deep in debt, which
23:45is one reason he took another job as New Salem's postmaster.
23:52The future president later described himself during this period as a floating piece of
23:56driftwood.
23:58But that soon started to change when Lincoln began studying law on his own.
24:03Then in 1834, he was elected to the Illinois state legislature.
24:08When the legislature met, Lincoln had to come here to the Illinois state capitol in Vandalia.
24:14But in 1837, Lincoln and other legislators voted to move the capitol from Vandalia in
24:20the south to its present location in Springfield, in the middle of the state.
24:27Soon a stunning new capitol building was rising over Springfield.
24:32When Lincoln moved here that same year, he was still so in debt, he had to buy $17 worth
24:37of bedclothes on credit.
24:39But he managed to start a law office and begin his nearly 25-year career as a lawyer.
24:45The site of his last law partnership still stands just feet from the old statehouse.
24:50Outside is a statue of Lincoln with his wife, Mary Todd.
24:54It was here in Springfield where they first met and were married in 1842.
25:00The next year, the Lincolns were able to pay $1,200 in cash to buy this Victorian house
25:06just a few blocks from his office and the state capitol, where he would argue cases
25:11in front of the Illinois Supreme Court.
25:15In 1858, Lincoln used the statehouse to announce his candidacy for the U.S. Senate just two
25:21years before he was elected president.
25:24In 2007, an Illinois senator named Barack Obama followed in Lincoln's footsteps and
25:31came to the old statehouse to declare that he was also a candidate for the highest office
25:35in the land.
25:38On May 3, 1865, Lincoln's body was brought to the statehouse after his assassination
25:43in Washington.
25:45More than 70,000 mourners arrived here to pay tribute to their martyred president.
25:50First Lady Mary Todd requested that the president's body be buried nearby in Springfield's peaceful
25:56Oak Ridge Cemetery.
26:00But in 1876, the tomb was raided by a gang of thieves who wanted to steal Lincoln's coffin
26:06so they could hold it for ransom.
26:08The Secret Service foiled the plot, and the burglars were later nabbed in Chicago.
26:13Today, his tomb and memorial here have made Oak Ridge Cemetery the second most visited
26:19cemetery in the nation, after Arlington National Cemetery.
26:25Lincoln wasn't the last to make a profound impact on the state of Illinois.
26:30Less than 30 years later, oil magnate John D. Rockefeller decided to fund a new university
26:35in the Midwest.
26:37In 1890, he joined forces with the fledgling American Baptist Education Society to create
26:42the University of Chicago.
26:45As modern skyscrapers were rising in downtown Chicago to the north, a new English Gothic
26:50style campus with towers, cloisters, and gargoyles appeared here in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood
26:57on land donated by Marshall Field, the owner of a legendary Chicago department store.
27:02At its center stands the Rockefeller Chapel, named in honor of the university's biggest
27:07benefactor.
27:09Rockefeller decided to fund a university in Chicago in order to help give the rapidly
27:13growing Midwest a first-class educational institution, like those in the already well-served
27:19eastern states.
27:21He later said it was the best investment he ever made.
27:25Today, University of Chicago students hail from every walk of life and every corner of
27:30the globe, which is one reason cricket matches are now frequent sites on the campus green.
27:36At least 80 Nobel laureates have called its storied halls home, including a former law
27:41professor named Barack Obama.
27:44In the 1940s, the University of Chicago was the site of a secret government experiment
27:49that some feared had the potential to blow up half of Chicago.
27:53It happened during World War II, when the U.S. government was racing against the Germans
27:58to be the first to harness the power of the atom.
28:01The experiment was led by an Italian physicist and professor named Enrico Fermi.
28:07It happened here in the middle of campus, near where the glass dome of the Mansueto
28:11Library now stands.
28:13At the time, this was the site of the University of Chicago's football stadium, Stagg Field.
28:20On December 2, 1942, in a squash court underneath the stadium stands Fermi and a team of physicists
28:28succeeded in creating the world's first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.
28:33The experiment was called Chicago Pile 1, since the reaction was started in a pile of
28:38uranium.
28:40Most importantly, Fermi and his team were able to control the reaction once it got started.
28:46It was a precursor to the development of the atomic bomb.
28:50Very few people on campus knew it was even happening, or that it could have leaked radiation
28:54under Stagg Field if it had gotten out of control.
28:59A sculpture by Henry Moore, titled Nuclear Energy, now marks the site of this historic
29:04achievement.
29:06No one knows why Moore shaped his sculpture the way he did.
29:09He claims it was to inspire those looking up at it to feel like they were in a cathedral.
29:18In 1943, the year after Enrico Fermi's atomic experiment, a train wound its way north through
29:24Illinois on its way to Chicago.
29:29On board was a guitarist from Mississippi named Muddy Waters.
29:34Many of his fellow passengers were also arriving from the American South and hoping to find
29:38better work and better pay in the bustling industries of Chicago.
29:42They were some of the up to seven million African Americans that left the rural South
29:46for opportunities in the North during what's known as the Great Migration.
29:51In the 1940s, Chicago was a wartime boom town, producing everything from fighter planes
29:57and torpedoes to parachutes and engines.
29:59It was also a hub for raw materials like grain, coal, and steel.
30:05Much of it was carried in and out of the city by train, which made Chicago one of the nation's
30:10most important transportation hubs.
30:13The city also had its own rapid transit system, famously known as the L, since it was an elevated
30:19train line.
30:21When the first L lines had started snaking across the city in 1892, the Chicago Tribune
30:26reported that servant girls, cooks, and chambermaids left their work to watch from back porches
30:31the fast-flying trains as they went by.
30:38The year after his own train pulled into Chicago, Muddy Waters bought his first electric guitar
30:45and began creating his new distinctive electrified blues sound.
30:49It would go on to be known as Chicago Blues.
30:53Waters had grown up picking cotton on a Mississippi plantation, but a decade after arriving in
30:57Chicago, he was able to buy this Victorian house on the city's South Side and turn the
31:02basement into a recording studio.
31:05Waters himself is said to have slept in a room just over the studio so he could listen
31:09to all the great music being played down below when he went to sleep.
31:12Many of Chicago's great blues musicians passed through Waters' house, but it fell into disrepair
31:19after he died in 1983.
31:22Musicians, artists, architects, and engineers have all played profound roles in the story
31:29of Chicago.
31:30One of the most interesting places to ponder their impact is under the curving reflective
31:36surfaces of something called Cloud Gate.
31:41It's a giant steel sculpture by Indian-born British artist Anish Kapoor that lies in the
31:46city's Millennium Park.
31:50This 110-ton object was inspired by the shape and surface of a drop of liquid mercury.
31:57It's easy to see why locals prefer to call it simply the Bean.
32:02Its position here on the edge of the park means it reflects some of Chicago's highest
32:06structures, not to mention the sky and clouds after which it's named.
32:15The city's phenomenal growth after its great fire could easily have turned all the land
32:19here on Lake Michigan into sites for new high-rises, but luckily when Chicago was first being settled
32:26long before the fire, a group of savvy Chicago residents argued that the city should preserve
32:31an area of its lakefront for public use and that it should be an area free of any buildings.
32:38They succeeded, and the city's lakefront park was born.
32:44The rubble from the 1871 fire was actually used to expand the park into the lake.
32:50It was renamed Grant Park in 1901 in honor of Ulysses S. Grant, Illinois' own Civil War hero.
32:57Today it covers more than 300 acres and is one of the nation's most impressive urban spaces.
33:05At its heart is the majestic Clarence F. Buckingham Memorial Fountain.
33:10In a city of skyscrapers, a 150-foot-high jet of water may not seem like much unless
33:16you're gazing up at it from the ground.
33:20When the new Jay Pritzker Pavilion was commissioned in 1999, it was deemed a work of art rather
33:25than a building in order for it to meet the park's rules.
33:30Today this bandshell is home to the annual Grant Park Music Festival.
33:34Designed by architect Frank Gehry, it's one of Chicago's most famous structures, even
33:39though it stands just 120 feet tall.
33:41It proves that not all buildings in Chicago have to touch the sky to get noticed.
33:47That's also the case for the 140-foot-high house that Jordan built, otherwise known as
33:52the United Center, home court of the Chicago Bulls.
33:56From 1984 to 1999, Michael Jordan ruled supreme here, except for a short break to play Major
34:03League Baseball for the Chicago White Sox.
34:06The city's other Major League Baseball team, the Chicago Cubs, has its home on the city's
34:10north side.
34:12In 1915, Wrigley Field was the first professional ball field to allow fans to keep foul and
34:18home run balls.
34:20That was in the day when it was still named Wiegman Park and home to the Chicago Whales.
34:26The Cubs arrived here in 1916, and 10 years later, the field was renamed Wrigley after
34:33chewing gum magnate William Wrigley Jr.
34:36Today, it's the only Major League field where fans can buy seating on top of nearby buildings.
34:42Once, fans used to gather here for free, but then the building's owners started charging
34:47admission.
34:48The Cubs weren't happy and sued for a share of the profits.
34:52They won, and now the rooftop owners have to hand over 17 percent of their ticket sales
34:56to the team.
34:57For fans, it's still a perfect place to see the Chicago Cubs in action from high above.
35:10Journey across Chicago by air and the rich variety of its structures and spaces can be
35:16mind-boggling.
35:17But just north of the city, in Wilmette, lies a very unique kind of architectural wonder,
35:24a stunning nine-sided temple standing above the shore of Lake Michigan.
35:31This is the Baha'i House of Worship for North America, and was dedicated in 1953.
35:38The Baha'i faith centers on three core principles, the oneness of God, the unity of mankind,
35:44and the equal validity of all the world's religions.
35:48The faith began in 1844 in southern Iran, after a man in the city of Shiraz declared
35:54he was a messenger of God, and that the time had come for all faiths to unite.
36:01Iran deemed him a heretic, and still actively persecutes followers of the Baha'i faith to
36:05this day.
36:08But there was a time here in Illinois when followers of new religious faiths were also
36:12persecuted for their beliefs.
36:16That's what happened to the Mormons, and why the Church of Latter-day Saints is now based
36:20in Utah, not Illinois.
36:24In 1839, Joseph Smith and the followers of his Church of Latter-day Saints arrived here
36:30on a bend on the Mississippi River in western Illinois.
36:33Smith named their new settlement Nauvoo, based on an old Hebrew word that means beautiful
36:38place.
36:39Today, Nauvoo lies near where the states of Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri all meet.
36:46The Mormons had already been harassed in New York, Ohio, and Missouri.
36:51Here on the banks of the Mississippi River, Smith hoped they would finally be able to
36:55live and practice their faith in peace.
37:00The Mormons quickly established a new town here, with stores, a bank, and neighborhoods
37:04of distinctive brick houses.
37:06It was all planned to be centered around a grand Mormon temple that looked a lot like
37:12this modern one does today.
37:16The house Smith and his family lived in still stands here on the edge of town.
37:25Life in Nauvoo proved challenging from the start.
37:29In the first seven years, 2,000 Mormons died, many from malaria, tuberculosis, and fever.
37:37Yet thousands flocked here from as far away as the British Isles to join the Church.
37:41At its peak, Nauvoo had a population of 11,000, making it one of the largest cities in Illinois
37:47and one that rivaled Chicago at the time.
37:50But as the community grew, so too did tensions with other Illinois settlers due to the Mormons'
37:55increasing power, exclusivity, and rumors that Joseph Smith and his followers practiced
38:01polygamy.
38:03The Church itself confirms that Smith had at least 40 wives while he was in Nauvoo.
38:08Some were as young as 14.
38:10Some others were already married when they married Smith.
38:14Even though he tried to keep his multiple marriages a secret, outrage against the Mormons
38:18was growing.
38:20And then things erupted.
38:23Smith, who was also Nauvoo's mayor, ordered the destruction of the printing presses of
38:27a local newspaper that was highly critical of the Church and Smith's practice of polygamy.
38:33When that happened, there was public outcry, and many feared that the Mormons in Nauvoo
38:38would be attacked.
38:40Illinois Governor Thomas Ford finally stepped in and convinced Smith and his brother to
38:44face trial.
38:46"'I am going like a lamb to the slaughter,' Smith is reported to have said.
38:51The two were brought here, to the nearby town of Carthage, where they were put in this small
38:56jail.
38:57But when word got out that they were here, an anti-Mormon mob descended on the jail.
39:03On June 27, 1844, gunmen finally broke down the door and shot both Smith brothers to death.
39:11Their bodies were returned to Nauvoo and buried next to their house.
39:16Their graves are now a pilgrimage site for followers of the Church.
39:21Within two years, led by their new leader, Brigham Young, the Mormons began their epic
39:26journeys west, often on foot, to the promised land of Utah.
39:32Generations later, the Mormons reacquired the lot where the old temple stood, and in
39:371842, they dedicated a brand new temple, reconstructed to look exactly like the one
39:42their ancestors had left behind.
39:44And now, every summer, members of the Mormon community stage a pageant near the temple
39:50to remember their fallen leaders and celebrate their return to Nauvoo.
39:56The Mormons who left Nauvoo didn't get a chance to witness Illinois' great boom as the 19th
40:01century came to a close.
40:04It was a boom that created the perfect conditions for the rise of one of America's most legendary
40:08gangsters, Mob Boss Al Capone, also known as Scarface.
40:14As workers flooded into the city, tensions flared between different racial and ethnic
40:18groups.
40:19The city government also struggled to provide basic services.
40:23Criminals filled the void.
40:25But organized crime in Chicago exploded when Prohibition kicked in in January 1920.
40:32The city's location on Lake Michigan, in the center of the country and close to Canada,
40:36made it a perfect hub for the illegal liquor trade.
40:40By the mid-1920s, there were more than 1,300 gangs in Chicago.
40:46Their leaders had colorful nicknames like The Scourge, Mossy, Big Steve, Dutch, and
40:51Spike, and were given almost celebrity treatment in the press.
40:54But none was more famous than a gangster named Al Capone, who arrived in Chicago from Brooklyn
41:00in 1920.
41:01He began by working for Chicago's underworld kingpin, Johnny Torrio, here in the suburb
41:06of Cicero.
41:08Capone frequented the now-famous Kloss Restaurant.
41:11It's said he ran a brothel upstairs and bought off every politician in town.
41:16But after his own brother, Frank, was gunned down by the police in Cicero's streets, Capone
41:21knew he would have to do whatever it took if he wanted to expand his operations and
41:25survive.
41:28When he finally took over from Torrio in 1925, Capone was just 26, but already in charge
41:34of an empire funded with everything from prostitution to bribery to gambling, robbery, and murder.
41:41But there was no business more lucrative than bootlegging.
41:45Capone's men smuggled alcohol into and all over the city, to clubs like this one, the
41:51Green Mill Cocktail Lounge.
41:54Capones are said to have played his favorite song, Rhapsody in Blue, the moment Capone
41:58walked through the door.
41:59It was one of his favorite hangouts, and had secret underground tunnels for his men to
42:04move the booze.
42:06It's now a respected jazz club, but the hidden Prohibition-era elevator behind the bar is
42:11still there.
42:14As Capone's men, armed with Tommy guns, worked to expand their boss's power over Chicago,
42:19they turned the city's streets into a war zone.
42:21The cornerstone of the Holy Name Cathedral still has bullet marks from a gun battle between
42:26Capone's men and their rivals in 1926.
42:31The violence finally came to a head in 1929, on Chicago's North Side.
42:36It was here, on Valentine's Day, that Capone's henchmen, dressed in police uniforms, lined
42:41up seven members of a rival gang against the wall of a parking garage that used to stand
42:45on this open lot.
42:47Then, they shot them dead.
42:50The brutal killings came to be known as the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, and forever
42:55sealed Chicago's reputation as a hub of organized crime.
42:59Then, on a warm July night in 1934, the notorious Indiana gangster, John Dillinger, who was
43:07on the run, stepped out of Chicago's Biograph Theater after a movie.
43:13That's when FBI agent Melvin Purvis lit a cigar to send a signal to his fellow agents.
43:19They opened fire on Dillinger as he ran for cover.
43:22Five shots were fired.
43:23Three hit Dillinger and brought him to the ground.
43:26One went right through the back of his neck and out one of his eyes.
43:30It was the shot that killed him.
43:34Illinois has been home to many other notorious criminals since Dillinger, but some of its
43:39most famous convicts have been those elected by the public to the highest office in the
43:44state, here in the new state capital in Springfield.
43:48Since the 1960s, four Illinois governors have done time in federal prison.
43:54Otto Koerner was convicted of bribery.
43:57Dan Walker did his time for bank fraud.
44:01George Ryan was convicted of 18 felonies, including racketeering, but got out early
44:06for good conduct.
44:08Finally, there's former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, who's currently serving a
44:1214-year sentence for 17 corruption-related charges related to his attempt to sell President
44:18Barack Obama's former Senate seat.
44:25Giant glaciers may have been responsible for leveling much of Illinois, but they didn't
44:30succeed in flattening everything.
44:34Down on the state's southernmost tip, this is the Shawnee National Forest.
44:40It's home to some of the most dramatic landscapes in all of Illinois, and a place known as the
44:46Garden of the Gods.
44:49Starting about 320 million years ago, wind and rain began whittling away the mountains
44:54here and exposing these dramatic sandstone forms.
44:58Today, trails wind through these rocks, which offers stunning views over the largest piece
45:03of protected public land in Illinois.
45:07This state is not well known for its wild spaces, but the Garden of the Gods proves
45:13that Illinois is full of surprises.
45:17It's a land where people have always reached for the sky.
45:22From its mysterious ancient mound builders, to the Native American tribes who followed,
45:28to those who looked out over smoldering Chicago and already knew that it would rise from the
45:33ashes even greater than before.
45:37This is the true spirit of Illinois.