I went to Springfield, Illinois, last weekend. Springfield tourism is about Abraham Lincoln,
and that is why I went there. Springfield is the capital of Illinois, but
political presence was not as evident as the remembered presence of the
deceased President. The city seemed
quiet to me after living with the ongoing activity of Madison.
Lincoln reminders abound, especially statues. Other reminders
include his home, his tomb, the presidential museum and library, the old state
capitol building (Illinois now uses a different capitol building), Lincoln’s
law office, and even a church pew that his family used. A church pew in a different church than the
family church and that Lincoln didn’t use was a bit over the top for me, so we
didn’t try to find it. We left our car at the hotel and walked to everything
except the tomb, to which we drove. It was a good but short adventure.
My daughter Dolores (a.k.a. Dede and Dori) and her
boyfriend Tom came with me. My little Toyota Yaris was filled with us and our
bags. It’s a small car. We made the best of it.
Tourist attractions are easy to find. Springfield has at
least two visitor centers that were staffed with helpful people. We needed to
buy tickets for the Lincoln home. No luck at the visitor centers; we had to go
to the visitor building near the home to get them. We were given maps of the
downtown area, so it was easy to find other places of interest.
The Lincoln home, a National Historic Site, is restored
to what apparently was its appearance when the Lincolns lived there. That was
our first stop and the beginning of what I called the B.S. factor emanating
from tour guides. Our guide in the home had plenty of anecdotes to tell about
the family, and some of it probably was true. The house was very interesting,
with floral wallpaper and very colorful carpets. The historic preservation
people even preserved the family’s outhouse. The sidewalk is a boardwalk. The
street is gravel with blacktop showing through. Good attempts at showing how
people lived in Lincoln’s time.
I enjoyed the Abraham Lincoln Historical Museum and the
old state capitol building. The historical museum is composed of exhibits that
include a replica of Lincoln’s boyhood home in Indiana, and the front of the
White House as it formerly appeared, into which visitors proceed to see other
display areas. We saw a very poignant replica of a slave auction. A few video
clips were playing. I especially liked one that featured the late Tim Russert
doing a television newscast of the 1860 presidential election campaign. He did
it in the style of today’s campaigns. He told the campaign story and mixed in
fake political commercials sponsored by fake pacs. I laughed a lot. It was a
good way to bring the 1860 story to life. Needless to say, Russert recorded
this before he died.
The old state capitol building shows the simplicity of
government as it was in the 1860s. We didn’t stay with the tour guide, whose
anecdotal commentary carried the B.S. factor pretty far and made the tour very long. The rooms are furnished in the style of
the period and are well labeled. Large painted portraits of famous people are
there, including George Washington and his young companion LaFayette, who
assisted in the American Revolution.
We had prioritized our visit so we didn’t see everything
due to time constraints. We omitted the Presidential Library. We walked past the governor’s mansion and
skipped the tour of the Frank Lloyd designed home after hearing that the tour
would take an hour. We found the Episcopal Cathedral but it was locked.
Restaurants were satisfactory but not nearly as fascinating as the restaurants
around the capitol building in Madison. We found no Occupy Wall Street demonstrators
around the Illinois capital building. Our last stop was the Lincoln tomb, which
is occupied by the family, with the exception of son Robert, who is buried
somewhere else.
A stop on the way to Springfield was at Starved Rock
State Park near Ottawa, Illinois . We climbed the rock. It had stairways that
made the climb relatively easy for most people. The view at the top is worth
the climb. I’m glad we stopped there.
