page_title: Blue Island, Illinois
section_title: Transportation
hierarchical_section_title: Blue Island, Illinois / Infrastructure / Transportation
caption_attribution_description: English: Picture by G.A. Coffin entitled “Deputies Trying to Move an Engine and Car on the Chicago, Rock Island, and Pacific Railroad at Blue Island, July 2, 1894”.
context_page_description: Blue Island is a city and a south suburb of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, located approximately 16 miles south of Chicago's Loop. Blue Island is adjacent to the city of Chicago and shares its northern boundary with that city's Morgan Park neighborhood. The population was 23,706 at the 2010 United States Census.
  Blue Island was established in the 1830s as a way station for settlers traveling on the Vincennes Trace, and the settlement prospered because it was conveniently situated a day's journey outside of Chicago. The late-nineteenth-century historian and publisher Alfred T. Andreas made the following observation regarding the appearance of the young community in History of Cook County Illinois, "The location of Blue Island Village is a beautiful one. Nowhere about Chicago is there to be found a more pleasant and desirable resident locality."
  Since its founding, the city has been an important commercial center in the south Cook County region, although its position in that respect has been eclipsed in recent years as other significant population centers developed around it and the region's commercial resources became spread over a wider area.
caption: The Rock Island Depot at Vermont Street during the riots of June 29, 1894
exif: {}