[4] LaSalle County is part of the Ottawa, IL Micropolitan Statistical Area of Northern Illinois.

Though LaSalle County is in the Chicago media market, it retains a unique identity with a mix of river towns and vast expanses of farmland.

As William D. Boyce reportedly founded the Boy Scouts of America in Ottawa, the council is named for him.

[7] He was hired to restore public order resulting from an influx of workmen creating the Illinois and Michigan Canal.

[10] The tri-county area of DeKalb, LaSalle, and Kendall has been influential in terms of its politics, sports, multimedia, industry, and technology.

LaSalle County was home to the Westclox Company for many years, it was the site of the first Lincoln-Douglas Debates, and was the home to the discoverer of Pluto, as well as a Wild West figure, multiple published authors, a legendary NCAA athletic director and coach, and multiple political figures.

Kendall County is the home to a seminal piece of 20th Century architecture, the birthplace of the Harvester Reaper, (as well as the precursor to the International Harvester Company), the plastic tackle box and plastic-injection molding, and is the home of multiple athletes, politicians, and a former Speaker of the House of Representatives.

The end of the Black Hawk War led to an additional surge of immigration, once again coming almost exclusively from the six New England states as a result of overpopulation combined with land shortages in that region.

Some of these later settlers were from upstate New York and had parents who had moved to that region from New England shortly after the Revolutionary War.

These settlers were primarily members of the Congregational Church, though due to the Second Great Awakening, many of them had converted to Methodism, and some had become Baptists before coming to what is now LaSalle County.

As a result of this heritage, the vast majority of inhabitants in LaSalle County − much like antebellum New England − were overwhelmingly in favor of the abolitionist movement during the decades leading up to the Civil War.

They laid out farms, constructed roads, erected government buildings and established post routes.

The community has a strong association with the 16th President, and elements of the downtown area of the city retain much mid-19th century architecture.

Starved Rock State Park, (south of Utica on Illinois Route 178), is the crown jewel.

Buffalo Rock State Park (east of Utica, and west of Naplate/Ottawa on Dee Bennett Road) has an enclosure which features American bison, as well as the mound sculpture complex, known as the Effigy Tumuli.

In its early years, LaSalle County supported the Democratic Party, being southwest of the Free Soil strongholds in the far northeast of the state.

Although the county gave a plurality to Woodrow Wilson in 1912 and supported Franklin D. Roosevelt in his first three elections, it otherwise voted Republican until 1960.