infrastruktura: Starved Rock State Park

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

Starved Rock State Park is a state park in the U.S. state of Illinois, characterized by the many canyons within its 2,630 acres (1,064 ha). Located just southeast of the village of Utica, in Deer Park Township, LaSalle County, Illinois, along the south bank of the Illinois River, the park hosts over two million visitors annually, the most for any Illinois state park. A flood from a melting glacier, known as the Kankakee Torrent, which took place approximately 14,000–19,000 years ago led to the topography of the site and its exposed rock canyons. Diverse forest plant life exists in the park and the area supports several wild animal species. Of particular interest has been sport fishing speci…

Evidence: 47 • authority: 88

1683: The French Build a Fort. This chapter details the construction of Sieur de La Salle's Fort St. Louis atop Starved Rock. Located along the south shore of the Illinois River in LaSalle County, Illinois, the 125-foot-tall bluff known today as Starved Rock, or Le Rocher to the French, is the tallest and best-known geological feature in the upper Illinois Valley. The strategic advantages of the site, especially during times of Iroquois unrest, were many. The summit of Starved Rock is relatively level when compared to all other sandstone bluffs in the vicinity. It was easily defended by a handful of men, and lookouts could monitor both upstream and downstream approaches to the bluff. With t…

Evidence: 43 • authority: 72

The Illinois Country (French: Pays des Illinois [pɛ.i dez‿i.li.nwa]; lit. 'land of the Illinois people'; Spanish: País de los ilinueses), also referred to as Upper Louisiana (French: Haute-Louisiane [ot.lwi.zjan]; Spanish: Alta Luisiana), was a vast region of New France claimed in the 1600s that later fell under Spanish and British control before becoming what is now part of the Midwestern United States. While the area claimed included the entire Upper Mississippi River watershed, French colonial settlement was concentrated along the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers in what is now the U.S. states of Illinois and Missouri, with outposts on the Wabash River in Indiana. Explored in 1673 from Gr…

Evidence: 29 • authority: 80

Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet

Evidence: — • authority: 72

New France was the territory colonized by France in mainland North America, beginning with the exploration of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Great Britain and Spain in 1763 under the Treaty of Paris. A vast viceroyalty, New France consisted of five colonies at its peak in 1712, each with its own administration: Canada, the most developed colony, which was divided into the districts of Quebec (around what is now called Quebec City), Trois-Rivières, and Montreal; Hudson Bay; Acadia in the northeast; Terre-Neuve on the island of Newfoundland; and Louisiana. It extended from Newfoundland to the Canadian Prairies and from Hudson…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

St. Louis (officially the City of St. Louis) is an independent city in the U.S. state of Missouri. It lies near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while its metropolitan area, which extends into Illinois, had an estimated population of over 2.8 million. It is the largest metropolitan area in Missouri and the second-largest in Illinois. The city's metropolitan statistical area is the 23rd-largest in the United States. The land that became St. Louis had been occupied by Native American cultures for thousands of years before European settlement. The city was founded on February 14, 1764, by French fur traders Gilbert…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Louis XIV (Louis-Dieudonné; 5 September 1638 – 1 September 1715), known as the "Sun King", was King of France from 14 May 1643 until his death in 1715. He is the longest-reigning monarch in history, reigning for 72 years and 110 days. His reign brought about a golden age in French history, marked by a great expansion of the French colonial empire and a flourishing of French culture throughout Europe. As an absolute monarch, Louis expanded monarchical rule and diminished the power of the nobility, developing a strong centralised state ruled from the Palace of Versailles that persisted until the French Revolution. Louis became king upon his father Louis XIII's death in 1643. Since he was too…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Illinois ( IL-ih-NOY) is a state in the Midwestern United States. It borders on Lake Michigan to its northeast, the Wabash and Ohio rivers to its south, and the Mississippi River generally to its west. Of the fifty U.S. states, Illinois has the fifth-largest gross domestic product (GDP), the sixth-largest population, and the 25th-most land area. Its capital city is Springfield in the center of the state, and the state's largest city is Chicago, located in northeastern Illinois. Present-day Illinois was inhabited by Indigenous cultures for thousands of years. The French were the first Europeans to arrive, settling near the Mississippi and Illinois rivers in the 17th-century Illinois Country,…

Evidence: — • authority: 72

Jacques Marquette (French: [ʒak maʁkɛt]; June 1, 1637 – May 18, 1675), sometimes known as Père Marquette or James Marquette, was a French Jesuit missionary who founded Michigan's first European settlement, Sault Sainte Marie, and later founded Saint Ignace. In 1673, Marquette, along with Louis Jolliet, an explorer born near Quebec City, explored and mapped the northern portion of the Mississippi River Valley.