Hotels in Chicago

Hotels in Chicago

The city can often be a super place to visit. Many would like to see the city as they want to see the tourist sites and the skyscrapers and the entertainment or sports venues of the city. You may want a luxury or cheap hotel in the city. You may want accommodation in the city that can offer good access to the area of the city you want to visit.

Often called The Windy City and The City of Broad Shoulders, Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837 after initially being founded in 1833 at the site of a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed. The city soon became a major transportation hub in North America and quickly became the transportation, financial and industrial center of the Midwest.

Chicago is located in northeastern Illinois at the southwestern tip of Lake Michigan. It sits on the continental divide at the site of the Chicago Portage, connecting the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes watersheds. The city lies beside Lake Michigan, and two rivers, the Chicago River in downtown and the Calumet River in the industrial far South Side, flow entirely or partially through Chicago. The Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal connects the Chicago River with the Des Plaines River, which runs to the west of the city.

The Des Plaines River flows southward for 150 miles through southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois in the USA Midwest, eventually meeting the Kankakee River west of Channahon to form the Illinois River, a tributary of the Mississippi River. Des Plaines is French for "of the plains" or "of the prairie", but it is pronounced phonetically by locals (with no silent letters), rather than using the French pronunciation.

The river provided a transportation route and portage for native Americans, who revealed to early explorers how to traverse waterways of the Des Plaines watershed to travel from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi Valley.

Topographical relief is so unusual in Chicago that what would be unnoticed hills and ridges in other locales have been given names. The highest natural point within the city limits is in the Beverly neighborhood. In pioneer days, this hill was called Blue Island, so named because at a distance it looked like an island in set a tractless prairie sea. In fact it, and the nearby Stony Island, were both islands in Lake Chicago. The diagonals Clark Street and Ridge Boulevard run along ridges that were once sandbars in the Lake.

Chicago has been at the forefront of skyscraper building since the late 19th century. Today Chicago can boast to having 5 of the 10 tallest buildings in the United States and 10 of the 50 tallest in the world.

By modern standards, Chicago has little reason to build up: being located in the Midwest, it has plenty of room to sprawl outwards on almost Euclideanesque flat ground. There is the Chicago River, which may bring some argument as to geographic restriction, but the impact of which was strongly lessened by the strict adherence to the Chicago grid across the river.

The Chicago River is 156 miles long, and flows through downtown Chicago. Though not especially long, the river is notable for the 19th century civil engineering feats that directed its flow south, away from Lake Michigan, into which it previously emptied, and towards the Mississippi River basin. This was done for reasons of sanitation.

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