August 12 Illinois History Minute

It’s August 12th. And on this day in 1833, the Chicago Town Board of Trustees held its first meeting. About 300 people lived in Chicago at the time it was incorporated as a town. By the 1870s, its population had soared past 300-thousand. One reason for Chicago’s tremendous growth --- its location on the Chicago River and Lake Michigan, which, thanks to the Illinois and Michigan Canal, would make it a major Midwest port city.

Singer-songwriter Dan Fogelberg wrote this song about his father, a high school and college bandleader in Peoria. Fogelberg, who recorded a string of hit records in the late 1970s into the ‘80s, was born in Peoria on this day in 1951.