City Slogans From Around Illinois

By this time, virtually everyone knows Chicago is not known as "The Windy City" due to actual high winds, right? It's almost certainly a result of an editorial from a New York newspaper claiming Chicago was "full of hot-air politicians."  And being referred to as "City of the Big Shoulders" is a reference to a line in Carl Sandberg's famous poem, "Chicago".

But what about other cities around the state of Illinois? Reboot Illinois recently compiled a list of 21 cities and their slogans and attempted to explain each one.

There's a couple of local cities on the list. For example, DeKalb might be the Home of the Huskies, but it's also the "Barbed Wire Capital of the World":

Barbed wire was patented by Joseph Farewell Glidden in DeKalb, Illinois in 1873. Glidden’s patent was an improvement on the design for barbed wire made by another DeKalb resident, Michael Kelly. Glidden and his parter Isaac Ellwood began manufacturing barbed wire in DeKalb in 1874.

In one of the better known slogans around the state, Freeport, of course, is "Pretzel City":

Freeport earned its nickname in 1895, when the Daily Democrat referred to the Illinois town as “Pretzel City.” Freeport was home to the Billerbeck Bakery, which was established in 1881 and was the largest producer of pretzles. Although Billerbeck closed over a century ago, pretzels are still an integral part of Freeport’s identity today.

And finally, I had no idea that whskey played such a big role in the history of Peoria. Thus, it's referred to as "Whiskeytown" (also the name of a great band):

Peoria was once the whiskey capital of the country, producing more whiskey than any other city in history, and contributing the most to the federal government’s whiskey tax than any other city.

Check out the full list at Reboot Illinois.