Evanston ( EV-ən-stən) is a city in Cook County, Illinois, situated upon the North Shore along Lake Michigan. A suburb of Chicago, Evanston is 12 miles (19 km) north of Downtown Chicago, bordered by Chicago to the south, Skokie to the west, Wilmette to the north, and Lake Michigan to the east. Evanston had a population of 78,110 as of 2020.

Founded by Methodist situation leaders in 1857, the city was incorporated in 1863. Evanston is house to Northwestern University, founded in 1851 before the city’s incorporation, one of the world’s leading research universities. Today known for its socially forward looking politics and ethnically diverse population, Evanston was historically a teetotal city, until 1972. The city uses a council–manager system of dealing out and is a Democratic stronghold. The city is heavily shaped by the assume of Chicago, externally, and Northwestern, internally. The city and the the academy share a historically obscure long-standing relationship.

Prior to the 1830s, the Place now occupied by Evanston was mainly uninhabited, consisting largely of wetlands and swampy forest. However, Potawatomi Native Americans used trails along later lying ridges that ran in a general north–south direction through the area, and had at least some semi-permanent settlements along the trails.

French explorers referred to the general area as “Grosse Pointe” after a point of estate jutting into Lake Michigan nearly 13 miles (21 km) north of the mouth of the Chicago River. After the first non-Native Americans approved in the area in 1836, the names “Grosse Point Territory” and “Gross Point voting district” were used through the 1830s and 1840s, although the territory had no defined boundaries. The Place remained unaccompanied sparsely settled, supporting some cultivation and lumber activity on some of the sophisticated ground, as well as a number of taverns or “hotels” along the ridge roads. Grosse Pointe itself steadily eroded into the lake during this period.