Decatur, IL
Decatur Airport sits four miles east of downtown with two runways — the longest 8,496 feet, 6/24 — and a Class D tower. Decatur is an agricultural processing center: Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), one of the world's largest agribusinesses, has its global headquarters here and the city processes more soybeans than any other location on earth. Caterpillar runs its Decatur Mining and Construction plant, where the company's 797F mining trucks (the largest off-highway truck made anywhere — 400 tons gross weight) are built. The real history is older: at the May 9-10, 1860 Illinois Republican State Convention, held in a wood-frame "Wigwam" on the public square here, two of Abraham Lincoln's old Macon County friends carried in fence rails Lincoln had supposedly split as a young man in 1830 — and the "Rail Splitter" nickname was born. Lincoln won the state nomination from that convention; he won the national Republican nomination a week later in Chicago.
Abraham Lincoln arrived in Springfield in 1837 as a 28-year-old lawyer. He married Mary Todd here in 1842, raised four sons here, practiced law and rode the Eighth Judicial Circuit for nearly 25 years, gave the "house divided" speech here in 1858, and left for Washington as president-elect in 1861. After his assassination on April 15, 1865, the funeral train carried him back through eleven cities to Springfield. He has been here ever since. Lincoln's Tomb in Oak Ridge Cemetery is a 117-foot granite obelisk designed by sculptor Larkin Goldsmith Mead, built with public donations between 1868 and 1874. Lincoln is buried in a crypt under the obelisk along with Mary Todd and three of their four sons — Edward, William, and Thomas ("Tad"). Robert, the only one who survived to adulthood, served as Secretary of War under Garfield and is buried at Arlington. At the entrance to the tomb a bronze bust of Lincoln has a polished gleaming nose — generations of visitors have rubbed it for luck. Oak Ridge is the second most-visited cemetery in the United States, after Arlington. The Old State Capitol (1837-1840, served as the State House until 1876) is downtown — a low Greek Revival building of locally quarried Sugar Creek limestone. Lincoln gave the "A house divided against itself cannot stand" speech here on June 16, 1858, accepting the Republican nomination for the US Senate. He also lay in state here after his assassination. The current Illinois State Capitol (1888) sits two blocks SW — its dome rises 405 feet, 74 feet taller than the US Capitol in Washington, intentionally so. The Lincoln Home (Eighth and Jackson, ~6 blocks SE of the Old State Capitol) is the only home Lincoln ever owned. The Lincolns lived there from 1844 until 1861. It is now a National Park Service unit — Lincoln Home National Historic Site — and the surrounding four-block neighborhood has been restored to its 1860 appearance.
Caterpillar Inc. was created in 1925 by the merger of two California tractor companies — the Holt Manufacturing Company of Stockton and the C. L. Best Tractor Company of San Leandro. Holt had built the world's first commercially successful tracked tractor in 1904; legend has it that a Holt photographer watching the prototype crawl across a field said it moved "like a caterpillar," and the name stuck. The combined company moved its headquarters from California to Peoria in 1928 to be closer to its largest customer base, and Peoria has been the home of Caterpillar manufacturing and engineering for almost a century since. The Caterpillar Visitors Center opened in 2012 in a modern building on the downtown Peoria riverfront. Its centerpiece is a real Cat 797F Mining Truck — one of the largest production trucks in the world. The 797F carries a 400-ton payload, weighs 1,400 tons fully loaded, runs on 24-foot Michelin tires (each tire weighs 12,000 pounds and costs about $42,000), and burns one gallon of diesel per quarter-mile. Visitors can climb into the cab. The bed of the truck has been converted into a small theater — the "Future Theater" — where a film about Cat's role in global infrastructure plays. The Heritage Gallery traces the company from the 1904 Holt tractor through the British Mark I tank of WWI (which used Holt-style continuous tracks), through the Hoover Dam, the Panama Canal widening, the Three Gorges Dam, and into modern autonomous mining and electrification. Admission is free. The Center is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10am to 3:30pm. Note: Caterpillar moved its corporate headquarters to suburban Chicago (Deerfield) in 2017 and again to Irving, Texas in 2022. Manufacturing, engineering, the world headquarters of the Cat Foundation, and most senior R&D remain in the Peoria area.
Deep sandstone gorges carved by Sugar Creek over millions of years. The old-growth forest here was never logged — some trees are 300+ years old. From 2000ft, the gorge system appears as dark shadows cutting through solid canopy. Sugar Creek itself makes dramatic S-curves visible from above. The suspension bridge is hard to spot but look for the clearing at the nature center.
31 historic covered bridges — more than any county in the US. The Bridgeton Bridge (1868) and Mansfield Bridge are the most photogenic from the air. At 2000ft AGL in mid-October, the hardwood canopy surrounding each bridge turns orange and crimson. The annual Covered Bridge Festival draws 1 million visitors. The bridge cluster is concentrated between Turkey Run and Raccoon Lake along Sugar Creek and Big Raccoon Creek.