Settlement and development Rockford traces its roots to 1834, as the combined settlements of Midway were founded on both banks of the Rock River. On the west bank, Germanicus Kent and Thatcher Blake (with his slave Lewis Lemon) founded Kentville; the east bank was settled by Daniel Shaw Haight. With the location of the Rock River equidistant between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River, the combined settlement derived the name "Midway". In 1836, Winnebago County was created (from both
Jo Daviess and
LaSalle counties), with Midway named as its county seat, as it was "halfway between
Galena and Chicago on a line of four-horse coaches." In 1837, the village of Midway was renamed Rockford, highlighting a rocky
river ford across the Rock River in the village. In the same year, Rockford established its first post office, with Daniel Shaw Haight as the first postmaster. In 1840, the first weekly newspaper began circulation. In 1847, Rockford Female Seminary – today
Rockford University – was founded. On January 3, 1852, Rockford was officially chartered as a city; a year later the long-running "Forest City" nickname first appeared, used by the
New York Tribune. Also in 1852, the
Galena and Chicago Union Railroad connected Rockford to Chicago by railroad. At the time of its founding, many of the village's residents were transplants from the
Northeastern United States and
upstate New York. Descended from English Puritans, the Midway/Rockford population was similar to much of the rest of northern Illinois and nearly all of Wisconsin during the mid-19th century. After the
Black Hawk War, additional immigrants moved to northern Illinois; during the 1830s and 1840s, Rockford and Winnebago County were considered a cultural extension of New England. During the antebellum period, Rockford shared abolitionist leanings, lending considerable support to the
Free Soil Party and the later
Republican Party. In 1848, 42 percent of voters in Winnebago County (where Rockford dominated as the county seat) voted for
Martin Van Buren. In 1852, Free Soil candidate
John P. Hale became the first presidential candidate to visit Rockford, although he would only receive 28 percent of the vote. In 1860,
Abraham Lincoln won 3,985 votes in Winnebago County to the 817 votes of
Stephen A. Douglas. The 1850s brought industry that would change Rockford forever. In 1853, inventor
John Henry Manny moved to Rockford to produce horse-drawn mechanical
reapers for farmers and transport the finished products by rail. Chicago implement manufacturer
Cyrus McCormick (whose company became
International Harvester) took Manny to court after he produced nearly 6,000 machines; Manny would prevail on both judgement and an appeal. Along with the production of agricultural machines, Swedish furniture cooperatives established the city as a manufacturing base. The Rockford Union Furniture Company, under
John Erlander, spearheaded these cooperatives. Today, Erlander's home is a Rockford museum that shows his efforts in elevating Rockford to second in furniture manufacturing in the United States, behind
Grand Rapids. During the
Civil War, one of the first Illinois regiments to be mobilized, the Zouaves, were from Rockford. The city also served as the site for Camp Fuller, a training site for four other infantry regiments. In 1884, Rockford established its first city-wide public school district, constructing
Rockford Central High School in 1885; following the construction of the high school, the district began construction of brick multi-story multigrade school buildings across the city. The Rockford Female Seminary became the alma mater of
Jane Addams in 1881. The move accompanied the Seminary's transition into a more complete curriculum, which was represented by its renaming to Rockford College in 1892. Culture flourished with the founding of the Mendelssohn Club in 1884, which became the oldest operating music club in the United States. It was complemented by the construction of a
Carnegie library in 1902, which became the first building of Rockford's public library system. 1903 saw the dedication of the
Winnebago County Veterans Memorial Hall in the presence of sitting President
Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt returned to Rockford during his
campaign in 1912 and again to address the soldiers at
Camp Grant, a training site for
World War I soldiers.
20th century campaigning and driving through State Street in downtown Rockford, 1960 The twentieth century saw demographic changes to Rockford. An influx of Italians, Poles, Lithuanians, and African Americans replaced the previously dominant Irish and Swedes. The city was also no stranger to contemporary political issues. Electorally divided between wets and drys on the subject of
prohibition, Rockford featured a coalition of labor unionists and socialists that elected numerous aldermen and carried 25 to 40 percent in mayoral elections. During World War I, an antiwar protest by the
Industrial Workers of the World led to 118 arrests. In 1920, the city was a target of the
Palmer Raids. While its congressional district favored Republicans, Rockford continuously elected former socialists as mayor between 1921 and 1955. One of its contemporary attractions, the
Coronado Theatre, opened in 1927. Noted for its
atmospheric styling, the Coronado rivaled its counterparts in Chicago and was added to the
National Register of Historic Places in 1979. Camp Grant was turned over to the Illinois National Guard. During World War II, it reopened as an induction center and POW detention camp. The
USS Rockford, a
Tacoma-class frigate named for the city, was commissioned in March 1944 and earned two service stars. In the September 1949 issue of
Life magazine, postwar Rockford was described as "nearly typical of the U.S. as any city can be." Due to this archetypal nature, sociologists like
W. Lloyd Warner warned of the necessity to "understand the realities of their system." In the late 1950s, Rockford lost over 50,000 trees to
Dutch elm disease, thinning the tree canopy of the "Forest City" for decades. From 1955 to 1965, several events would take place that would shape the development of Rockford into the 21st century. In 1956, construction was approved for a four-lane US 20 bypass; along with shifting truck traffic away from the downtown routing of the highway, the bypass established much of the southern border of the city (which remains to this day). In 1958, Interstate 90 was completed in Illinois, becoming the Northwest Tollway; in a decision that would change Rockford forever, the interstate highway was not routed through the city, but near the Winnebago-Boone county line, with the eastern terminus of the US 20 bypass in Cherry Valley. In 1963, the Rockford area was selected by Chrysler Corporation to construct an assembly plant; the final site of what is now the
Belvidere Assembly Plant is southwest of Belvidere, between US 20 and Interstate 90. In 1973,
Cherryvale Mall was opened as the first fully enclosed shopping mall in the city; nearly 6 miles from the city center, the mall was located at the intersection of the US-20 bypass and the Northwest Tollway, sharing a city border with Cherry Valley. While growth at the eastern end of Rockford undersaw favorable conditions for growth, established neighborhoods began to suffer irrevocable decline. In the 1970s, efforts commenced to revitalize downtown Rockford, once the primary shopping district. In a highly criticized decision, the city reconfigured several blocks of downtown into a
pedestrian mall, closing off the Main Street/West State Street intersection to traffic. In 1975, what the local press characterized as one of the most well-known and haunting crimes took place when newspaper delivery boy Joey Didier was kidnapped and murdered by Robert Lower. In the late 1970s,
Symbol, a 47-foot tall
Alexander Liberman abstract sculpture was placed in the center of the pedestrian mall. In 1980, then Congressman
John B. Anderson, representing the 16th Congressional District in Illinois which includes Rockford, ran for President of the United States. Further attracting commercial growth, the
MetroCentre 10,000-seat multi-purpose arena, was opened in 1981. Rockford was hit hard by the
early 1980s recession and became one of the highest-unemployed cities in the United States. In 1981, rail service to the city ended as
Amtrak ended the Dubuque-to-Chicago
Black Hawk route. After struggling to compete with more modern facilities, the Coronado Theatre showed its last movie in 1984, shifting solely to stage performances. To expand passenger service, the Greater Rockford Airport rebuilt its passenger terminal in 1987, although the access of Rockford to the Northwest Tollway (to the much larger O'Hare Airport) became a popular alternative. In a decision that continues to affect Rockford to the present day, in 1989, Rockford Public School District 205 closed several schools across the city in a cost-cutting decision. In the aftermath of the decision, the school district was found guilty in federal court of discrimination against minority students. From 1993 to 2001, the school district was under federal oversight to desegregate its schools, costing over $250 million. In 2009, the downtown pedestrian mall was removed as part of a street refurbishment project, restoring Main Street (Illinois Route 2) to two-lane traffic for the first time in nearly 45 years. As an effect of the recession, by 2013, thirty-two percent of mortgages in the city were
upside-down. While remaining the largest city in Illinois outside Chicago and its suburbs, estimated population decline from 2010 to 2017 led Rockford to be overtaken by Joliet and Naperville (the latter, slightly), effectively making it the fifth-largest city in Illinois. From 2014 to 2018, the unemployment rate in Rockford has fallen from 12.9 percent to 4.4 percent (the lowest since 2000). While predominately a manufacturing community since World War II, Rockford has struggled to diversify its industrial base. Shifting from agricultural machinery and furniture, manufacturing in the city remains dominated by fasteners, automotive suppliers (representing FCA Belvidere Assembly), and the aerospace industry (
Woodward and
Collins Aerospace; the latter, tracing its roots to
Sundstrand Corporation). In 2012, Woodward selected suburban Loves Park for a $200 million manufacturing campus toward its energy control and optimization systems.
Boeing included Rockford in a list of five finalists to manufacture the
777X during union disputes in 2014. In 2016,
AAR Corporation opened a
MRO facility at the Rockford airport with a hangar large enough to fit a
Boeing 747-8. During the 2010s, all three major health care providers in Rockford underwent major expansions of their facilities. SwedishAmerican, in partnership with the
University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center, opened a $39 million Regional Cancer Center in 2013. In 2014,
MercyHealth (based in
Janesville, Wisconsin) acquired Rockford Health System, the operator of Rockford Memorial Hospital. In 2019, MercyHealth opened Javon Bea Hospital-Riverside (named after the MercyHealth CEO and its Riverside Boulevard/Interstate 90 location); its second hospital in Rockford, the $505 million complex was the largest construction project in the history of the city. In July 2024, a
200-year flooding event overwhelmed the city's
stormwater management systems, killing at least one. ==Geography==