“No State in the Valley of the Mississippi offers so great an inducement to the settler as the State of Illinois. There is no portion of the world where all the conditions of climate and soil so admirable combine to produce those two great staples, Corn and Wheat, as the Prairies of Illinois.”

Back cover of December 1863 issue The Farmer and Gardener magazine, with an interesting advertisement for Illinois Central Railroad touting rich farmland for sale in the "garden state of the west."

Curiously, it is Illinois that is referred to as the "state of the west" and not California as one might guess.