Springfield IL and St Louis MO

Our 16th President, Abraham Lincoln (R)

The Illinois State Fairground RV Park proved to be a great location to visit the highlights of the land of Lincoln, Springfield, IL. We had just enough time after our long drive from Goshen, IN to visit the Dana-Thomas house designed by architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. This house was built from 1902-04 and is a prairie style design. Prairie houses were characterized by low, horizontal lines that were meant to blend with the flat landscape around them. We learned one way Mr Wright created these horizontal lines was by cleaning out the horizontal grout lines in the brick but not the vertical lines between the bricks. Susan Lawrence Dana was a wealthy woman and gave Mr Wright a blank check to remodel her family’s Italianate mansion. This resulted in a 12,000 square foot, 35 room house on three main levels. Only one room reflected the previous mansion and made fun of the Victorian style. Dana loved to entertain and was a leading hostess in Springfield thus the house was designed for display and entertainment. It is the best preserved prairie style house and contains the largest collection of site-specific, original Wright art glass and furniture. We have enjoyed seeing Frank Lloyd Wright’s creative thinking when it comes to defining space in a building.

We enjoyed driving around the historic city of Springfield and seeing the Old and New State Capitol Buildings and the 132 ft Rees Memorial Carillon Tower at Washington Park.

We visited Mary and Abraham Lincoln’s home of 17 years which is now run by the National Parks. This is the only home he ever owned. The home has been restored to its appearance of 1860 but when they purchased the home in 1844 for $1200 it was much smaller and only one story. They enlarged the home in 1856 to meet the needs of their growing family. When Abraham Lincoln first arrived in Springfield in 1837, he was 28 years old, single, $1500 in debt and came riding in on a borrowed horse with all his belongs in two saddle bags. He was basically self taught only spending a short amount of time in school. He also taught himself the law by reading William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England and was admitted to the bar in 1836. It was inspiring to learn how a man of humble beginnings and great losses became our heroic 16th president!!

We made a stop at Lincolns Tomb State Historic Site, pictured above. It is the final resting place of Abraham Lincoln, his wife Mary Todd Lincoln, and three of their four sons.

We learned much more about his life at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum. With two excellent movies, a recreated one room log cabin from his childhood home in Kentucky to the White House this is an excellent interactive museum! We left with a deeper sense of his heart and soul and the heavy burden he carried for our nation.

Here are a few of our favorite Lincoln quotes:

I am exceedingly anxious that this Union, the Constitution, and the liberties of the people shall be perpetuated in accordance with the original idea for which that struggle was made, and I shall be most happy indeed if I shall be an humble instrument in the hands of the Almighty, and of this, his almost chosen people, for perpetuating the object of that great struggle.
–February 21, 1861 Speech to the New Jersey Senate

“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorn bushes have roses.”

“I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down upon the earth and be an atheist, but I cannot conceive how a man could look up into the heavens and say there is no God.”

“Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”

“My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.”

From Springfield we drove 96 miles to Queen Casino RV Park in St Louis, Missouri on the Mississippi River. The sun was out so we headed to the Gateway Arch at the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. They are currently transforming the grounds surrounding the Gateway Arch which includes biking and running trails, space for outdoor concerts and a new museum commemorating westward expansion. It looked very different from our last visit in 1998 when there was a floating McDonalds on the river. That is gone and now there is a floating helicopter pad and the same Riverboat Cruises.

The Arch is still so amazing standing at 630 feet. It is the world’s tallest arch, the tallest man-made monument in the Western Hemisphere, and Missouri’s tallest accessible building. It was designed by architect Eero Saarinen in 1947; construction began on February 12, 1963, and was completed on October 28, 1965, for $13 million, equivalent to $190 million in 2015. The monument opened to the public on June 10, 1967. There is a very interesting movie you can watch that covers its construction. No OSHA laws back then!! Omar’s hands were sweating just watching the movie! (Congress established the OSHA agency under the Occupational Safety and Health Act, which President Richard M. Nixon signed into law on December 29, 1970) The Arches foundation is 60 ft deep, the legs at the base are 54 feet wide, and the top is 17 feet wide. You can see 34 miles in each direction on a clear day. We had pretty good clarity. It’s an impressive monument to the vision of Thomas Jefferson and St Louis’ role in the westward expansion of the US. The museum was moved for the new construction work but we were able to see a few things at the Old Court House across from the memorial.