#14: Illinois Countryside
I must confess I’m also guilty of thinking all of Illinois is basically one big Chicago, but it turns out that over 27 million acres of Illinois are farmland. That’s a whopping 75%! Now, there’s only one caveat here. The urban population percentage for this state is 88.5%, meaning that only 11.5% of the people from Illinois live in the countryside.
That gives us all a pass for assuming they all live in big cities. Nearly 9/10 people do, so I’ll continue to justify my assumptions with those statistics in mind. If you’re interested in what that 75% of the land is used for, Illinois is the leading producer of corn, swine, and soybeans!