- [Narrator] Chicago is one of America's mightiest cities.

But have you ever wondered how it ended up, way out here in the middle of the country?

The story starts with waterways.

The city is at a key crossroads of water routes, both natural, and human made, but what drew people to follow those waterways and settle here?

It was the land.

The fertile soil beneath the Prairie spelled opportunity.

And what did those people do when they got here?

They did what humans do.

They planted and prospered, built and battled.

Bought and sold.

Reshaped and restored.

To tell this epic story we take to the skies where we can see the big picture.

Beyond Chicago's borders, beyond our present time.

Beyond Chicago from the air.

(wind blowing) (gentle music) - [Narrator] In an 1886 interview with the Chicago Tribune, Mark Twain said, "It is strange how little has been written about the upper Mississippi.

The river below St. Louis has been described time and again, and it's the least interesting part.

Along the upper Mississippi, every hour brings something new.

There are crowds of odd islands, bluffs, prairies, hills, woods, and villages, everything one could desire to amuse the children."

(bright music) Mississippi Palisades State Park in northwest Illinois captures just about everything Mark Twain described in that quote.

Centuries of erosion have carved towering limestone formations, a wonder to those who appreciate natural beauty or want to conquer it.

(bright music) The wooded cliffs offer a spectacular view of the islands and side channels in the river.

The US Department of the Interior named the park a national natural landmark in 1973.

(bright music) The Mississippi River starts in Lake Itasca in Minnesota and flows all the way to the Gulf of Mexico.

It's the second longest river in North America, after its tributary, the only slightly longer Missouri River.

It drains 40% of the continental United States, more than a million square miles, including 32 states and parts of Canada.

Hundreds of millions of migratory birds follow the so-called "Mississippi Flyway" every spring and fall, 60% of all North American birds, more than 325 species.

Its natural splendor not withstanding, humans have used the river for centuries too.

It was the Main Street of the mid-continent for Native Americans and a rich food source.

Later, it was a key route for European explorers, missionaries, fur traders, and colonizing armies.

In the 19th century, as the United States expanded westward and pushed out indigenous people, the river became a mechanized commercial waterway, bustling with steamboats.

For a few years, the pilot of one of those paddle wheelers was Samuel Langhorne Clemens.

At the helm, Clemens listened for his crew to call out "Mark Twain," the signal that a measuring string showed a safe depth.

Of course, after switching careers, Clemens adopted "Mark Twain" as his pen name.

Clemens spent much of his childhood here, in the river town of Hannibal, Missouri.

(bright music) In his book "Life on the Mississippi," he wrote, "When I was a boy, there was but one permanent ambition among my comrades in our village That was to be a steamboat man."

He later used Hannibal as the model for Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn's hometown.

Slavery was legal in Missouri when Clemens lived there, and it's a controversial theme in both books.

(train rumbling) By the turn of the 20th century, railroads had taken over most of the steamboat business.

But for certain kinds of bulk cargo, the river remains the most cost-effective form of transport.

Today, barges move more than a hundred million tons of freight annually on the upper Mississippi, using a system of 29 locks and dams.

(bright music) Landlubbers can follow the Mississippi by car on the Great River Road.

It follows the path of the river through 10 states.

(bright piano music) If you want to find a spot where the road literally hugs the river's edge, go to the confluence of the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers at Grafton and drive south to Alton.

Alton, Illinois, is a little town with a lot of history.

The seventh and final Lincoln Douglas debate took place on this spot, once the site of City Hall, in the 1858 race for the US Senate.

In some ways, the debates staged in small towns all over Illinois were not really like modern debates.

One candidate spoke for a solid hour, followed by an hour and a half long rebuttal and concluding with the first candidate's half-hour long response.

In other ways, the debates were all too familiar, with raucous, partisan crowds cheering and cat-calling like sports fans and candidates interrupting each other.

Lincoln even had to be restrained and finally removed from the stage in one debate.

Slavery was the main issue, with Democrat Stephen A Douglas favoring states' rights and Lincoln proposing abolition, albeit gradual.

Abolitionists in Alton eventually left no doubt about where they stood on the subject.

This nearly 10-story tall column stands above the grave of Elijah P Lovejoy, who dared to publish an abolitionist newspaper in nearby St. Louis when Missouri was a slave state.

After receiving death threats, Lovejoy moved to Alton to continue publishing.

But even on this side of the Mississippi, some locals were pro-slavery.

A mob murdered Lovejoy as he guarded his printing press hidden in a warehouse.

Afterward, Lovejoy became a martyr to the anti-slavery cause.

His death directly inspired such famous abolitionists as John Brown and Wendell Phillips.

Others in Alton used their homes and businesses as stations on the Underground Railroad, helping enslaved people escape to freedom in the north.

A bit of folklore, or maybe fake lore, in Alton concerns this fearsome creature, the dreaded Piasa bird.

It's said to have developed a taste for humans, snatching victims in its talons and flying away.

The tall tale was inspired by an image the Illiniwek people painted on a limestone bluff which early explorers described on their journeys along the Mississippi.

That painting is long gone.

This is a replica, painted by a local resident and maintained by the city.

(water burbling) (plucky banjo music) Just a few miles downstream from Alton, this tower marks another great confluence.

This is where the Missouri River flows into the Mississippi.

Here, Lewis and Clark started paddling upstream on the Missouri on their epic two year, 8,000 mile journey of discovery in 1804.

(bright music) President Thomas Jefferson enlisted them to explore the vast western lands newly acquired in the Louisiana Purchase and to chart a route to the Pacific Ocean.

Along the way, they established relations with indigenous people, aided by Sacagawea, a native American woman, and her husband, a French-Canadian trapper.

Lewis and Clark's journals and maps enabled the westward expansion of the nation, which, in turn, displaced many Native American people and led to the destruction of natural areas for cities and farmland.

(water flowing) Commerce was steam-powered on the Mississippi, but to get goods all the way to Chicago, folks had to switch to mule power on the Illinois and Michigan Canal.

This fella, named Moe, pulls a replica canal boat, called "The Volunteer," in LaSalle, Illinois, giving us a very authentic sense of what travel was like back then, minus the fighting and swearing that the teenage mule drivers were known for.

The canal opened in 1848, connecting the Chicago River to the Mississippi and creating a continuous waterway from the East Coast through the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico.

This sparked a land boom that made Chicago the fastest growing city in the world.

(bright music) About 50 years after the opening of the I&M Canal, a much wider and deeper canal was built right alongside it.

Its main purpose wasn't transportation.

It was built to save the city from waterborne diseases, like typhoid and cholera, by reversing the flow of the Chicago River.

This diverted the city's sewage away from Lake Michigan, the source of Chicago's drinking water, and sent it down the Mississippi instead.

This huge dam at Lockport helps to regulate that backwards flow.

When it opened in 1907, the dam included a powerhouse with hydroelectric generators that provided electricity to light Chicago's parks some 30 miles away.

Today, modern generators in the powerhouse produce 16 megawatts.

That's enough to power about 3,700 homes a year.

This is the only hydroelectric dam in the Chicago region.

The lock adjacent to the powerhouse lifts and lowers huge barges across a 40-foot change in elevation at Lockport.

It's like a freight elevator the size of several city blocks.

It's part of a total drop in elevation between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River of 163 feet.

(water burbling) Downstream, traffic flows into the Des Plaines River on its way to the Mississippi, so much traffic that movable bridges in Joliet are staffed 24 hours a day to accommodate the flow of barge tows from as far away as New Orleans.

(bright music) Here's a Joliet landmark that a century's worth of people dreamed they could fly out of, but we'll fly in: Joliet Prison, which has been closed since 2002.

The towering walls, guard towers, and buildings are made from Joliet limestone, with its signature yellowish color quarried on-site, starting in 1858, by prisoners literally walling themselves in.

Joliet's bed of solid limestone also made tunneling out of the prison virtually impossible.

It's the same stone used in the famous Chicago Water Tower, and the same Chicago architect designed both: W.W. Boyington.

He seemed to like this castle theme.

(country rock music) Maybe Joliet's most famous resident was fictitious, Jake Blues, half of the Blues Brothers.

Though, the prison also housed notorious killers Leopold and Loeb and Baby Face Nelson, who escaped after one year while being transported for trial.

By the early 1900s, the prison was notorious for overcrowding and austere unsanitary conditions.

Windowless cells were just four feet by seven feet with no running water or flush toilets.

An inscription carved into the floor on Death Row read, "It's never too late to mend."

(dramatic music) The prison has been used in half a dozen movies and TV series since it closed, but has also been plagued by vandalism and even arson.

Finally, the city of Joliet took control, and the Joliet Historical Museum now offers tours.

A lot of area waterways are hardworking, but if you wanna play or just take a break, there are waterways for that too, like the DuPage River with its scenic riverwalk in Naperville.

(bright music) The mile and three-quarters long trail opened in 1981 to celebrate Naperville's 150th anniversary.

Three small lakes adjacent to the river were quarries in the 1800s, when limestone was the big business here.

But for more than a century, their business has been swimming, boating, and beachgoing.

(bright music) If your idea of fun on the water is a little more lively, head up to the Chain O' Lakes.

(boats roaring) A one-of-a-kind bar in the middle of Grass Lake, accessible only by boat, called Blarney Island hosts drag boat races.

(rock music) (gentle music) These rare American lotuses are a reminder of a time when this fun-loving lake attracted a different crowd.

They came every August, when the lotuses were in bloom, to pick the fragrant flowers.

It was too much of a good thing, and the lotuses eventually died out.

But in recent years, they've made a small comeback.

(engine roaring) (gentle chiming music) The fun doesn't stop on the chain when the weather turns cold.

With the lakes frozen over, drag racing switches from boats to snowmobiles.

(engine roaring) A little down river, Norge Ski Club trains Olympic ski jumpers.

(gentle adventurous music) The club was established more than a hundred years ago by Chicago Norwegians, who had to come way out here to the Fox River Valley to find a place hilly enough for their favorite sport, although, they did get a little creative to stage ski jumping demonstrations at Soldier Field starting in the 1930s.

(daring music) (gentle inspiring music) We've all heard people diss Chicago for its cold winters, but true Chicagoans just bundle up and own it.

(inspiring music) (soft hum of vehicle driving) - [Narrator] Drive just an hour from downtown Chicago and you are in another Illinois entirely.

Metropolitan Chicago might have 75% of the state's population, but 75% of Illinois is farmland.

(gentle music) Five generations of the Tuttle family have been farming in northern Illinois for more than a hundred years.

They grow amber waves of grain in their wheat fields, as well as hay, corn, alfalfa, and Illinois' top crop, soybeans.

Illinois is the nation's leading producer of soybeans and one of the leaders in corn and hogs as well.

But our climate and soil allow the state's 72,000 farms to produce everything from horseradish and ostriches to Christmas trees.

(gentle music) Buried deep beneath Illinois' fertile soil in the northwest corner of the state is a natural resource that made Galena a boomtown.

I'm talking about lead.

Decades before the California Gold Rush, fortune seekers flocked to Illinois to get rich from lead in America's first mineral rush.

It's not as glamorous as gold, but lead was used in everything from ammunition to solder, pipe and pottery glaze.

Galena looks about the same today as it did in the 1840s, when it was bigger than Chicago and more important because by the end of the 19th century, Galena's boom went bust.

The town sat mostly abandoned until it was restored for artists and tourists starting the 1970s.

Some people call it the town that time forgot.

Among the first non-natives to spread the word about mineral wealth and fertile soil in Illinois were soldiers sent here from the east to fight in the Black Hawk War.

In fact, that fertile soil was at the very heart of that heartbreaking war.

Native American people like the Sauk and the Meskwaki had farmed northwest Illinois land for the better part of a century before being banished west of the Mississippi in a treaty.

The Sauk warrior Black Hawk believed native leaders had been tricked into giving up their land, and he felt the treaty was invalid.

He led a large band of followers back across the river in 1832 to plant crops and to return to their villages, which had been taken over by farmers and lead miners.

By many accounts, Black Hawk's intentions were to live and farm peacefully, but militias mustered to repel his band, and the war was on.

(gentle music) This is a replica of a fort where residents of the small lead mining settlement at Apple River near Galena fought off an attack by Black Hawk.

Today, it's an Illinois State Historic Site.

A little further east, this monument marks the site of the war's last battle in Illinois.

It's along a ridge at Kellogg's Grove.

A small cemetery holds the remains of militiamen killed here.

Notably, there's no cemetery for the Native Americans who died in the war, or even an accurate count of their losses.

One of the soldiers who arrived here after the battle to bury the dead militiamen was a 23-year-old Abraham Lincoln.

Future Confederate President Jefferson Davis also served in the war, but neither Lincoln nor Davis saw actual combat.

The US Army eventually joined the war, pursuing Black Hawk and his forces for several months and finally slaughtering them as they tried to flee back across the Mississippi.

Black Hawk himself was captured and paraded around the country, including a visit to President Andrew Jackson, whose disdain for Native Americans was well-known.

Afterward, Black Hawk was returned to his people in Iowa.

This monument in a state park near Oregon, Illinois has come to represent Black Hawk, but it doesn't really look like him.

That's because sculptor Lorado Taft actually meant it to represent the many tribes that populated Illinois.

Taft was part of an artist's colony here called Eagle's Nest on a bluff overlooking the Rock River.

The 270-ton sculpture is made of concrete, not exactly a material for a figure intended to be eternal.

It deteriorated badly over the years, but it's now been fully restored.

The forced removal of Native Americans set the stage for the growth of one of America's largest cities, Chicago.

But a thousand years before Chicago, there was a city in southern Illinois as big as London back then when Henry I was on the throne.

The lost city of Cahokia had a population estimated at 10 to 20,000 or more in the 12th century, making it the largest pre-Colombian city north of Mexico.

Within 300 years the entire population was gone, but the mounds the Mississippian people left behind have lasted for a millennium.

About 80 of their 120 mounds survive, most notably the towering Monks Mound.

At almost a hundred feet tall and more than a thousand feet wide, it's the largest earth work in North America.

Imagine moving 55 million cubic feet of earth using just hand-woven baskets.

Not surprisingly, it took decades to construct.

It's likely the community leader lived in a dwelling at the top, and the mound also was used for burials and ceremonies.

Having trouble picturing what the city looked like?

No worries.

That Cahokia Historical Museum Society has developed an augmented reality experience.

There was a vast central plaza.

Buildings and roads aligned with the four points of the compass with Monks Mound at its center, suggesting that Cahokia was a major pilgrimage city.

The museum has also recreated an astronomical observatory, or Woodhenge.

It's a circle of wooden posts that align with the sun at specific times of the year.

Cahokia is one of only 24 UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the US.

Others include the Statue of Liberty, the Grand Canyon and Independence Hall.

This promontory overlooking the Illinois River is named Starved Rock for maybe the state's best known Native American tale.

During a battle between tribes, a band of Illiniwek people took refuge atop the rock.

Advancing Ottawa and Potawatomi warriors surrounded the rock, cutting off their food supply, and the Illiniwek died of starvation.

Now archeologists have never found evidence to support this story, but it remains a powerful legend.

Illinois flatlanders are often amazed to learn there are actual canyons and waterfalls in the state.

They were carved by erosion as glaciers melted at the end of the last ice age.

Visiting this place is dramatic at any time of year, but fall is when Starved Rock State Park really puts on a show.

(gentle awe-inspiring music) There's a canyon even closer to Chicago than Starved Rock.

Sagawau Canyon in suburban Lemont, Illinois is the only natural canyon in Cook County.

It's part of a system of forest preserves that ring the city, thanks to remarkable foresight by some early 20th century nature lovers, including renowned architect Dwight Perkins and landscape architect Jens Jensen.

They predicted that as Chicago grew, there would be no natural areas left unless some were protected.

The voters agreed, and the Cook County Forest Preserve District acquired its first 500 acres in 1916.

Today, the district has grown to 70,000 acres of forests, prairies, wetlands, lakes, and streams.

It's one of the oldest and largest forest preserve districts in the nation.

During the Great Depression, many hiking trails and other amenities were added by the Civilian Conservation Corps.

Later during World War II, German POWs were housed in former CCC camps in the forest preserves.

Even if you don't have a drone, you can explore a tree top level in Bemis Woods Forest Preserve near Western Springs at an attraction called Go Ape.

(upbeat gentle music) Some folks drawn to Illinois by its natural landscape decided the land could use a little improvement.

This is an entirely human-made forest.

Morton Arboretum in Lisle is literally an outdoor museum showcasing and researching a wide variety of trees.

The 1700-acre arboretum is a powerful voice for conserving and planting trees worldwide.

Joy Morton, president of Morton Salt, discovered this property on a tour of the countryside in 1909 when he hopped out of his car to stamp out a grass fire.

Taking in the view, he decided he'd found the perfect place for his country estate.

Morton clearly took to heart his family's motto, plant trees.

Joy's father, J.

Sterling Morton, established the holiday of Arbor Day, and was later US Secretary of Agriculture.

The arboretum calls this one-acre maze garden a living puzzle.

(gentle music) Visitors solve it when they arrive at the great Sycamore tree at its center.

Is it cheating to have a little help from a drone?

In recent years, enormous outdoor sculptures made from or inspired by natural materials have drawn visitors by the thousands here.

These are by South African artist Daniel Popper.

He's known around the world for his colossal sculptures.

Centuries before non-native settlers began altering the landscape, Illinois was covered by 22 million acres of prairie.

The endless prairie grass was so tall, you had to mount a horse to see over the top of it.

And when you did, the grasses blowing in the wind looked like a vast sea.

Today, just 2000 acres of prairie remain.

That's less than 1/100th of 1% of the original.

And the largest patch of prairie in Illinois is growing south of Joliet, but it's not a surviving remnant.

It's a new prairie that has grown up with a lot of human help on abandoned...

This was once the site of the world's largest explosives and munitions factory, The Joliet Arsenal, established during World War II.

It produced nearly a billion bombs, shells, and mines, and more than a billion pounds of TNT.

The plant was surrounded by thousands of acres of open land and 37 miles of fencing to keep the public at a safe distance, and it's a good thing, too.

A massive explosion at one plant building in 1942 killed about 40 workers and was reportedly heard nearly a hundred miles away in Waukegan.

The plant closed after the Vietnam War, and amidst the abandoned buildings and rail lines, native prairie plants began to re-establish.

Lobelia, aster, purple coneflower, marsh phlox, bluestem and milkweed to name just a few.

This concrete bunker was one of many on the property designed to store munitions.

They're all empty now, and year by year, they're being torn down.

In 1996, the abandoned arsenal property was designated America's first national tall grass prairie.

It was given the Potawatomi name Midewin, which refers to a mystical power of healing.

Midewin says this is the largest prairie restoration in the US, but more than 90% of the land is still to be restored and it will take decades.

One part of the former arsenal will never be prairie.

It was consecrated as the Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in 1999, perhaps a nod to the property's military past.

It's 1/3 larger than Arlington National Cemetery.

Any Armed Forces member who meets a minimum active duty requirement and was not dishonorably discharged can be buried in one of the country's 155 national cemeteries with full military honors.

President Lincoln signed the law establishing the first 14 national cemeteries during the Civil War.

(gentle music) In addition to fertile soil and mineral wealth, Illinois has another natural resource the early settlers wouldn't have thought to exploit.

The wind.

Illinois ranked fifth in the nation for wind generation in 2020, according to the US government's Energy Information Administration.

This $600 million wind farm called Streator Cayuga Ridge near Odell, Illinois is comprised of 150 turbines across an area of 25 square miles and generates 300 megawatts.

That's far less than a typical nuclear plant, but it's enough to power about 45,000 homes a year.

That's a medium-sized Chicago suburb like Oak Park or Elmhurst, or the entire college town of DeKalb.

Wind power accounted for 94% of Illinois' renewable energy in 2020, but that's still only about 11% of the state's total electricity.

Generating electricity with wind is a relatively new thing, but for tens of thousands of years, the wind has been building mountains along the Indiana lakeshore.

Mountains of sand.

In the 19th century, a University of Chicago botany professor named Henry Cowles identified the Indiana Dunes as one of the most diverse ecosystems in the world.

Cowles pioneered the science we now call ecology, but he wasn't the only one interested in the Indiana shoreline.

Industrialists saw it as a wasteland waiting to be cashed in on.

To Elbert Gary, president of US Steel, the location, midway between the ore fields of the north and the coal mines of the south, and a stone's throw from the railroad hub of Chicago, was an ideal spot for the world's largest steel mill.

A developer of another kind saw the dunes as a perfect spot for vacation cottages, and to get his development started, he bought these model homes that had been displayed at Chicago's futuristic 1933 World's Fair, shipped them by barge across the lake, and perched them atop a dune.

As more and more dune land was developed or bulldozed for heavy industry, a battle to save the dunes began that would last for decades.

The grassroots Save the Dunes council eventually found a powerful ally in Illinois US Senator Paul H. Douglas.

With his help, they won their battle to create the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore in 1966.

It was named a national park in 2019.

As we fly inland from the water's edge, we're traveling back in time thousands of years to see earlier dunes that were once along the lakeshore.

It's a process called succession that starts at the beach.

Wind blows the sand and organic matter ashore, and a special kind of grass takes root, holding the dune together as it grows taller and taller.

Dying plants enrich the soil, and eventually you have forests, wetlands and prairies.

This natural process slowly pushes the shoreline and the dunes farther and farther into the lake.

And now this precious paradise is protected from development forever for scientists to study and for the rest of us just to enjoy.

(soft upbeat music) - [Narrator] Chicago's prime location and natural resources have historically drawn millions of people here, and their influence has reshaped the region far beyond our borders.

Many who left their mark in years past can now be found in cemeteries that were once outside the city limits.

Oak Woods, on the South Side, is the final resting place of many prominent African Americans.

Pioneering civil rights activist and journalist Ida B.

Wells, whose work brought the issue of lynching to international attention.

(gun firing) (audience cheering) Track star Jesse Owens embarrassed Adolf Hitler by winning gold in the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

(audience cheering) And he spoke out against racism in his own country too.

Thomas A. Dorsey, a former bluesman who invented a new kind of sacred sound: gospel music.

Power couple Eunice and John H. Johnson published "Ebony" magazine and its companion, "Jet," which shocked the nation with the story of Emmett Till's brutal murder.

Chicago's first Black mayor, Harold Washington.

He died in 1987, just months after being reelected and consolidating his coalition in the city's famous Council Wars.

Surprisingly, these black leaders share the cemetery with a mass grave and monument to thousands of Confederate Army prisoners.

They died at Chicago's Camp Douglas during the Civil War.

(train rumbling) Graceland Cemetery, now on Chicago's North Side, was downright rural when it was established in 1860.

In fact, it was part of the rural cemetery movement of beautiful, pastoral memorial gardens designed as an alternative to overcrowded urban churchyards.

Graceland was so beautiful that people came here for picnics.

Some of Chicago's most prominent architects rest here, like Mies Van Der Rohe, Louis Sullivan, and Daniel Burnham, who has his own island.

There are civic leaders too, like Charles Wacker, and captains of industry, including meat packer Philip Danforth Armour, Marshall Field, and Cyrus McCormick.

Potter Palmer, and with his wife, Bertha, lie in a Greek Temple.

"Mr. Cub" Ernie Banks is here and boxing great Jack Johnson.

The grave of industrialist George Pullman, who defied his striking workers, is encased in concrete and steel, supposedly to foil desecration of his body.

Before Pullman's fall from grace, he had revolutionized the rail industry with his sumptuous sleeping cars.

(train rumbling) Although canals brought the first wave of settlers to Chicago, it was the railroads that really put the city on the map.

By the mid-1800s, Chicago was the railroad capital of America.

(train whistle blowing) The glory days of steam live on at the Illinois Railway Museum in Union, Illinois.

Volunteers painstakingly restore and maintain the engines, rail cars, and tracks, and run the trains.

The museum's libraries and archives preserve documents from the Pullman Company, the CTA, the Chicago and Northwestern, and many other collections.

(bell dinging) You might recognize this old railroad bridge on the Chicago River near the Merchandise Mart.

This is almost exactly where Chicago's first railroad started.

The Galena and Chicago Union Railroad opened for business in 1848 with a secondhand engine called the Pioneer.

The line never did actually make it all the way to Galena.

But before long, rail lines were extending from Chicago in all directions, and they left their mark all over the region.

(train rumbling) So many lines intersect in the south suburb of Blue Island as they cross these five bridges over the Cal-Sag Channel that rail fans make pilgrimages here.

(train horn honking) (soft banjo music) If you're a rail fan, you know what this is.

It's a former Chicago, Burlington and Quincy roundhouse in Aurora, built in 1856, where steam engines were stored and turned around for return trips.

It was long ago converted to a restaurant and it's also the end of the line for Metra's BNSF commuter train.

In its heyday, the old roundhouse dispatched engines on the Burlington Route across 14 states as far west as the Rocky Mountains.

- [Woman] I christen thee Burlington Zephyr.

- [Narrator] The Chicago, Burlington and Quincy amazed the world in 1934 when its revolutionary diesel-powered streamliner the Pioneer Zephyr made a record-setting run from Denver to the Chicago World's Fair in just over 13 hours!

By many measures, Chicago is still America's railroad capital.

(train rumbling) Some 25% of all freight trains and 50% of the nation's intermodal trains pass through metropolitan Chicago.

(soft upbeat music) Railroads even gave us Ravinia.

This popular outdoor music venue was originally an amusement park built by the Chicago and Milwaukee Electric Railroad in 1904 to get more people to ride their trains.

Advertisements called it "the highest class amusement park in the west."

Alcohol was strictly forbidden.

There was a casino, a dance hall, baseball and an electric fountain, and a toboggan slide for the wintertime.

When the railroad went belly up four years later, a local group bought it and introduced fully-staged operas featuring the greatest stars of the age.

Since then, generations of concertgoers have spread out blankets, lit candles, and uncorked some wine to listen to artists as varied as Ella Fitzgerald, Yo-Yo Ma, George Gershwin, Janis Joplin, Dolly Parton, Common, and 50 Cent.

Ravinia is located on Chicago's North Shore, which is home to a string of historic railroad suburbs, some of the earliest bedroom communities, with the added bonus of miles of shoreline, where the wealthiest of the wealthy built lakefront mansions.

(gentle music) Dream homes come in all shapes and sizes in our region.

This one, far from the North Shore, was built for someone with no interest in conspicuously displaying her wealth.

It's Farnsworth House, in Plano, Illinois, near Aurora.

It epitomizes the less is more aesthetic of Mies Van Der Rohe.

Throughout his career, the German-born architect sought to reduce his buildings to beinahe nichts, meaning "almost nothing."

He thought he'd found a client sympathetic to his dream in Edith Farnsworth, a prominent doctor.

This is the closest Mies ever got to his ideal, but it was far from an ideal relationship between architect and client.

The house ended up costing more than twice the original budget of $30,000, and Mies and Farnsworth ended up suing each other.

After moving in, Dr. Farnsworth found living in a glass box a bit sterile and she added cozy elements that would've mortified Mies if he'd ever seen the completed house, which he never did.

The "New York Times" listed it among the 25 most important post-World War II buildings in the world.

Today, it's a museum, but global warming remains a constant threat.

The Fox River has flooded several times, inundating the house and requiring extensive repairs.

Decades before anyone was talking about global warming, architect Errol J. Kirsch designed this Oak Park home for energy efficiency, with thick walls, smaller north-facing windows, and even its orientation to the prevailing wind.

Is this the world's biggest sandcastle?

Well, Kirsch did tell us he was inspired by all the time he spent in sandboxes as a kid.

Kirsch also said his Oak Park neighbors are "not noted for their silence, "readily expressing opinions of the house, "good, bad, or indifferent."

The house distracted so many passing motorists that Kirsch says the city had to install a stop sign at his corner.

(gentle music) This nearly-70-foot-tall windmill in Batavia was part of a 300-acre estate belonging to yet another idiosyncratic homeowner, this one named Colonel George Fabyan.

He moved the windmill here from a farm in Lombard in 1914, but the Colonel didn't buy it to live in.

He reportedly just liked bread made from freshly-milled flour.

Colonel Fabyan's interests went far beyond fresh bread.

He invited researchers, scientists, and a few flat-out frauds to live and work on his estate, financing their research into subjects as varied as levitation through audio waves and secret codes embedded in Shakespeare.

While researching that hair-brained idea, one scientist cracked the most important Japanese code in WWII.

Fabyan's estate, including the windmill, is now a forest preserve.

If your dream home is a castle, you don't have to be an aristocrat or robber baron, as long as you're willing to get your hands dirty.

The 16th-century-style Ravenstone Castle in Harvard, Illinois, was a DIY project starting in 2001 for Jose and Rose Michel and their children.

The family is in the tapestry business and had visited a lot of European castles.

They operate Ravenstone as a B&B, so you can be king or queen for a night too.

If you live in a castle, these are the horses for you.

The Tempel Lipizzans.

An Austro-Hungarian archduke established the breed some 450 years ago for pulling carriages, fighting wars, and classical riding called dressage, which every nobleman was expected to study.

So, how did they end up in Old Mill Creek near the Wisconsin border?

Well, an American couple, Tempel and Esther Smith, had seen them in Europe.

They imported 20 of them to breed and started a riding school in the European tradition.

The Tempel Lipizzans have appeared all over the country, including at presidential inaugurations.

And while we're on the subject of royalty, a sport fit for kings also has a home in northern Illinois.

But organizers of the Barrington Hills Polo Club are quick to say they don't take the sport's aristocratic image too seriously.

They're more likely to cool off after a match with a beer than champagne.

They run the only accredited polo school in the area and they welcome everyone to give it a try.

If you'd rather swing a golf club than a polo mallet, there are hundreds of golf courses all across Illinois.

Medinah Country Club was founded by the Shriners, a fun-loving subset of of the Masonic fraternal organization that adopted Middle Eastern imagery as their signature style.

The clubhouse takes that to the max.

Medinah is consistently ranked among the top courses in the region and has hosted many major tournaments.

(golf club thwacking) Joe Louis Golf Course, nicknamed "the Champ," in south suburban Riverdale is the home course of the Chicago Women's Golf Club.

Founded in 1937, it's one of the first African American women's golf clubs in the country.

The course is named for heavyweight boxing champ Joe Louis.

He was an avid golfer and the first person of color to compete in a PGA-sanctioned event.

Louis fought for years to eliminate the exclusion of people of color from the sport.

If a golf course can have a boxing history, why not a football field?

Soldier Field, on Chicago's lakefront, was the site of one of the most famous boxing matches of all time, between Gene Tunney and aging former champ Jack Dempsey.

In round seven, Dempsey floored Tunney, but the ref famously gave Tunney an extra-long count to recover and Tunney went on to win the bout.

(bell ringing) Soldier Field stands on a lakefront entirely different from the one early settlers first encountered.

It's a 17-mile long public park built on landfill for all Chicago to enjoy.

There's music of all kinds.

Mating rituals; oh, I mean volleyball.

Adventure in the air.

Excitement on the water.

(boat engines rumbling) And no, we haven't forgotten that we're looking beyond Chicago.

These boats will sail the full length of Lake Michigan, 333 miles, in the annual Race to Mackinac Island, the world's oldest and longest freshwater sailboat race.

It's a reminder of the early mariners from beyond the horizon who followed water routes to this place in the middle of the country, drawn by the possibility of untapped natural wealth and who forever altered the landscape in ways our bird's eye view has revealed.

Beyond Chicago from the Air.