Waukegan is a city and the county seat of Lake County, Illinois, United States. It is part of the Chicago Metropolitan Area. As of the 2013 census estimate, the city had a population of 88,826. It is the ninth-largest city in Illinois by population, and it is the fifth-largest city on the western shore of Lake Michigan, after Chicago, Milwaukee, Green Bay, and Kenosha.HistoryThe site of present-day Waukegan was recorded as Riviere du Vieux Fort and Wakaygagh on a 1778 map by Thomas Hutchins. By the 1820s, the French name had become "Small Fort River" in English, and the settlement was known as "Little Fort". The name "Waukegance" and then "Waukegan" was created by John H. Kinzie and Solomon Juneau, and the new name was adopted in 1849.Waukegan had an abolitionist community dating to these early days. In 1853, residents commemorated the anniversary of emancipation of slaves in the British Empire with a meeting. Waukegan arguably has the distinction of being the only place where Abraham Lincoln failed to finish a speech; when he campaigned in the town in 1860, a fire alarm rang, and the man soon-to-be president had his words interrupted.
