Illinois is a landlocked state in the north-central United States, a region also known as the Midwest of the United States. Illinois borders Wisconsin to the north, Michigan through a water boundary in Lake Michigan to the northeast, Indiana to the east and Kentucky to the southeast, 5 days ago. The term was coined by Robert “Colonel McCormick”, owner of The Chicago Tribune, in the first half of the 20th century. When he began using “Chicagoland,” it was to describe the city and its fiefdoms of grain, wood and cattle that spread across Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan and Iowa.
Chicagoland is an informal name for the Chicago metropolitan area, defined by the Chicago Chamber of Commerce as all Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will counties. In northwest Indiana there are several ridges and sand dunes, some of which reach nearly 200 feet in height; most of them are found in Indiana Dunes National Park. Indiana was the first Western state to mobilize for the United States in the war, and Indiana's soldiers participated in every major clash of the war. Later, ownership of the claim was transferred to Indiana Land Company, the first recorded use of the word Indiana.
The governor of Indiana serves as the executive director of the state and has the authority to administer government as set forth in the Indiana Constitution. The largest educational institution is Indiana University, whose flagship campus was approved as an Indiana Seminary in 1820. The other three independent state universities are Vincennes University (founded in 1801 by the Indiana Territory), Ball State University (191) and Southern Indiana University (1965 as ISU — Evansville). While Indiana has committed to increasing the use of renewable resources such as wind, hydro, biomass or solar energy, progress has been very slow, mainly due to the continued abundance of coal in southern Indiana.
