Quality of Life Overview
The Rockford Area’s Quality of Life assets have garnered national and international acclaim. Rockford is a great place to live! Known as the “Forest City” due to its many tree-lined streets, Rockford balances big city sophistication with hometown appeal. Money Magazine called Rockford one of the top 200 safest places to live. AOL’s Homestore.com ranks Rockford among the 10 most affordable places to live.
View the Rockford Area Convention & Visitors Bureau video on Rockford - “Rockford. Real Original.” (9.33 min.)
Our Top Ten
- Anderson Gardens: Voted #1 Japanese Garden in North America by the Roth Journal.
- “Jane”: The most complete juvenile T-Rex in the world.
- Discovery Center Children’s Museum: ranked fourth in the nation
- 37 Golf courses, including the #1 rated public golf course in the State of Illinois, always mentioned in Golf Digest
- The Coronado Theatre: nationally recognized as the #1 1920’s Atmospheric Theater
- A nationally-recognized Park System
- Starlight Theater: Architectural Digest Award winner
- Nationally acclaimed in Sport Illustrated as “SportsTown USA “
- On The Waterfront summer music fest: Largest fest of its type in Illinois
- Pro-Am Golf Tourney: Oldest in the U.S.
Cultural Highlights
There’s always something to do in Rockford, Illinois. These are just a few of our many cultural highlights.
- Burpee Museum of Natural History has one of the Top Ten finds in the history of paleontology. Jane, “Rockford’s Celebrity Dinosaur,” is the most complete juvenile T.Rex in the world.
- Discovery Center Museum ranks as the fourth best children’s museum in the United States. It has the first community-built, outdoor science park in the nation.
- Klehm Arboretum & Botanic Gardens has the best conifer collection in North America, and is the second largest among the comparably-sized cities.
- At 119 years old, Mendelssohn Club is the oldest continuing music organization in the nation, presenting opera, touring international musicians, self-producing performances and training music students.
- Rockford’s “got it all” when it comes to music and performance arts for kids, including award-winning Kantorei Boys’ Choir, Rockford College Music Academy, Phantom Regiment Drum and Bugle Corps, Mendelssohn Club’s choruses for children, Rockford Area Youth Symphony Orchestra, Rockford Dance Company’s Dance Reach and more.
- Anderson Gardens, voted the #1 Japanese Garden in North America by the Roth Journal.
- Rock Valley College’s Starlight Theater is a new world-class summer facility about which the Chicago Tribune writes “…is a powerful, almost otherworldly sculptural presence.”
- Rockford Art Museum is the third largest art museum in Illinois outside Chicago.
- Rockford has a full range of history facilities, from Midway Village & Museum Center to Tinker Swiss Cottage, one of the few house museums in the nation with its original furnishings intact, and one of only two-dozen remaining Swiss-style homes in America.
- Rockford’s range of choral performances offers stellar opportunities for audiences and performers alike, including the Bach Chamber Choir, Mendelssohn Club, and Rockford Symphony Orchestra Chorales, and many others.
- Coronado Theatre’s $18.5 million restoration is the most extensive among all 17 cities, and the recipient of numerous prestigious national awards; the Coronado is the performance residents for Land of Lincoln Theatre Organ Society, Rockford Coronado Concert Association, Rockford Dance Company, and Rockford Symphony Orchestra.
- Rockford Symphony Orchestra’s growth is among the most rapid, and its budget is the fifth largest.