South Holland

Low-lying coastal province of the Netherlands, bounded to the north by North Holland, to the east by Utrecht and North Brabant, to the south by Zeeland, and to the west by the North Sea; area 2,910 sq km/1,124 sq mi; population (1997) 3,344,700. The capital is the Hague. There are chemical, textile, distilling, and petroleum refining industries. Bulbs are grown, and there is horticulture, livestock raising, and dairying.

The region is mostly below sea level. There are major ports at Rotterdam and the Hook of Holland. Other towns include Dordrecht, Leiden, Delft, and Gouda.

It was once part of the former county of Holland, which was divided into two provinces in 1840.

South Holland

Residential suburb in northeastern Illinois, at the junction of Thorn Creek and the Little Calumet River, 27 km/17 mi south of Chicago; population (1990) 22,100. It manufactures some furniture, boxes, and concrete products.

First settled by Dutch immigrants in 1846, it boomed with the arrival of the Illinois Central Railroad in 1853. Market gardening eventually became the economic mainstay of the community.

South Holland is the setting of Edna Ferber's Pulitzer prize-winning novel So Big (1924). It was here that the federal government brought action to implement school desegregation for the first time outside the South under the 1964 Civil Rights Act.