Zion, Illinois

Zion (named for Mount Zion in Jerusalem), or Zion City, is a city located in north-eastern Lake County, Illinois, United States, bordering Wisconsin to the north on the shores of Lake Michigan. It was founded as a Dowieist religious community in July 1901 by John Alexander Dowie (1847-1907), a Scottish evangelist and faith healer, with city land held by his Christian Catholic Church of Zion, and was later governed for several decades by his successor as General Overseer of the Church, Wilbur Glenn Voliva (1870-1942), until a city reorganisation in 1939 that saw former Church-held land holdings redistributed, at which point the city gave way to new, more secular polity.

Reading

Historical

• Forby, Theodore (1912), "Zion City - Religious Life", in Halsey, John J., A History of Lake County, Philadelphia: R. S. Bates, p. 740-746, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=chi.26755726&view=1up&seq=766 
• Barnes, V. V. (1912), "Zion City - Civic Life", in Halsey, John J., A History of Lake County, Philadelphia: R. S. Bates, p. 746-763, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=chi.26755726&view=1up&seq=772