Blue Island

About Blue Island

Blue Island is a city in Cook County, Illinois, United States, 16 miles (26 km) 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 22,558 at the 2020 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. In 1884, Alfred T. Andreas observed, "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. In addition to its broad long-standing industrial base, the city enjoyed notable growth in the 1840s during the construction of the feeder canal (now the Calumet Sag Channel) for the Illinois and Michigan Canal and as the center of a large brick-making industry beginning in the 1850s, which eventually gave Blue Island the status of brick-making capital of the world. Beginning in 1883, Blue Island was also host to the car shops of the Rock Island Railroad. Blue Island was home to several breweries, who used the east side of the hill to store their product before the advent of refrigeration, until the Eighteenth Amendment made these breweries illegal in 1919. A large regional hospital and two major clinics are also located in the city.

Although initially settled by "Yankee" stock, Blue Island has been the point of entry for many of America's immigrants, beginning in the 1840s with the arrival of a large German population that remained a prominent part of the city's ethnic makeup for many years. By 1850, half of Blue Island's population was either foreign-born or the children of foreign-born residents. Later, significant groups came from Italy, Poland, Sweden and Mexico.

The city is one of eleven incorporated areas in Illinois to have been designated by the White House as a "Preserve America" community.

Text: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Blue Island weather: 7-day forecast

Source: National Weather Service (NOAA).

Live webcams in Blue Island

Webcams: Windy.com

Living in Blue Island

Median household income

$59,489

Median home value

$178,700

Median rent

$1,072/mo

Median age

38.1

Map of Blue Island

Tap any street on the map to see it in Street View below. Map: © OpenStreetMap contributors.

Blue Island Street View

Drag the image to look around and tap the arrows on the ground to move. If it says there is no imagery, tap a nearby street on the map above.

Blue Island, IL population

Blue Island had 22,558 residents in the 2020 Census.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Decennial Census.

Blue Island at a glance

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau (Gazetteer, ZCTA), USGS GNIS, Wikidata.

Towns near Blue Island

• Calumet Park1.3 mi NE
• Robbins1.7 mi SW
• Dixmoor1.8 mi SE
• Merrionette Park1.9 mi NW
• Posen2.0 mi S
• Riverdale2.5 mi SE
• Alsip3.0 mi W
• Midlothian3.1 mi SW
• Crestwood3.2 mi W
• Harvey3.8 mi SE
• Markham4.0 mi S
• Phoenix4.1 mi SE

Straight-line distance between town centers.

Frequently asked questions about Blue Island