WAUKEGAN

city, seat (1841) of Lake County, northeastern Illinois, U.S., on a high bluff above Lake Michigan. The site was called Little Fort on 18th-century maps, a stockade probably established by French voyageurs who visited the area in 1695. The first white settler arrived in 1825. In 1849 the settlement was incorporated as a village and renamed Waukegan, Potawatomi Indian for "Little Fort." The first port of call in Illinois for ships plying the St. Lawrence Seaway, Waukegan is part of the Milwaukee-Chicago urban-industrial complex. To the north is Illinois Beach State Park. Comedian Jack Benny (1894-1974) was a native son. Inc. city, 1859. Pop. (1990) 69,392.