Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport

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.

The largest pre-Columbian settlement north of Mexico, just east of St. Louis. At its peak around 1100 AD, Cahokia had a population of 20,000+ — larger than London at the time. Monks Mound is the largest earthen structure in the Americas: 100 feet tall, covering 14 acres at its base. From the air, the geometric mound arrangement and the grand plaza are clearly visible. Most Americans have never heard of Cahokia — it's arguably the most underappreciated archaeological site in the country.

The 630ft Gateway Arch is the tallest man-made monument in the US — visible from 50+ miles in clear conditions. It marks the point where Lewis and Clark departed westward in 1804. Just 15nm north, the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers merge — two distinctly different colors of water flowing side by side for miles before mixing. Fly the river north from downtown St. Louis for both views. STL Class B airspace covers the downtown area.