Chicago, Illinois

Current Weather

The city of Chicago is primarily located in Cook County and is the county seat. A portion of Chicago extends into DuPage County.

When the people of Chicago refer to themselves: Chicagoan

Chicago is 180 feet [54.86 m] above sea level.^<1>

Time Zone: Chicago lies in the Central Time Zone (CST/CDT) and observes daylight saving time.

Both Kentucky and Wisconsin have communities that are also named Chicago.

At the time of the 2000 Census, Chicago had a population of 2,896,016 people^<2> (or 53.85% of the total population of Cook County). The population of Chicago represented 23.32% of the total of Illinois, making it the state's most populous community.

From the Census Estimates for 2008, Chicago had a population of 2,853,114 people. This is a decrease of 1.48% since the 2000 Census.

The following table shows the recent changes in population. For the years after 2000, the population counts are estimated. More information can be found on the Census Page for Chicago.

The following is a sample of nearby communities:

	Community	Direction	Distance<3>	2008 Population	Change Since 2000
	Des Plaines	NW	17 mi [27.36 km]	57,062	2.82% decrease
	Downers Grove	W	17 mi [27.36 km]	49,250	1.08% increase
	Elmhurst	W	13 mi [20.92 km]	46,013	7.6% increase
	Evanston	N	14 mi [22.53 km]	77,693	4.65% increase
	Oak Lawn	S	9 mi [14.48 km]	53,244	3.62% decrease
	Oak Park	NW	6 mi [9.66 km]	49,557	5.65% decrease

To learn more about neighboring communities, please visit the Neighborhood Page for Chicago.

Websites for Chicago

If you know of a local history or genealogy society for either Chicago or Cook County, would you please send us the URL for their website? We would like to add their link to our Gazetteer. To contact us, please visit our Feedback Page.

The Commemorative Quarter for Illinois<4>

Search for Local Businesses

People have found Google's 'Search-by-Location' to be a useful tool when planning visits to this area. We have prepared the following searches to help you find businesses, travel and vacation activities that are in (or close to) Chicago. It's likely that the search results won't include all of the businesses that are in this area, but the results should give you a good foundation for further searches.

For what it's worth: In addition to helping you submit your own search, clicking 'Other...' will frequently (but not always) show you some popular searches for this area.

If you find an error or your business wasn't included in the results, please contact Google to help them resolve the issue (we simply link to 'Search-by-Location' and have no control over their results).

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Footnotes