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ILLINOIS
PLAN YOUR TRIP TO ILLINOIS
Illinois travel vacations are fun and easy to plan: here are some great destinations and trip ideas.
Illinois is as rustic as the Shawnee National Forest, as cosmopolitan as Chicago, steeped in history, home to Abraham Lincoln who epitomized the self-made man, and site of the beginning of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s much acclaimed journey across the Oklahoma Territory. Cahokia Mounds attest to the nations that called this region home before white settlers arrived. Visionary architects like Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe created beautiful buildings you can tour today. Award winning wineries dot the state. Pro baseball, football and hockey draw fans from all over.
The Chicago Board of Trade is the world’s largest and oldest futures and options exchange, founded in 1848. Free trolley rides around Chicago are offered by the City of Chicago Dept of Transportation throughout the year. Sightseeing cruises on the Chicago River cover everything from architectural and historical cruises to dancing and fine dining, speedboat cruises and water taxis.In Northern Illinois you can visit Pres. Ronald Reagan’s boyhood home, and the Grant Home State Historic Site, where Pres. Ulysses S. Grant lived after the Civil War. Follow the Stagecoach Trail through Warren, and discover the serene landscape of the Anderson Japanese Gardens in Rockford.
Central Illinois is home to an Amish population, and houses the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and the Lincoln Home National Historic Site in Springfield, and features great golf courses and parks.
Western Illinois is bordered by the Mississippi River and has been home to American pioneers, Native Americans, French explorers, and Mormons. The Mormon Nauvoo Temple, reconstructed in 2002, exceeds 50,000 sq. ft.
Southern Illinois offers scenic beauty at Cave-In-Rock State Park, Cache River State Natural Area, Shawnee National Forest and Fern Clyffe State Park among others.
Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site, the Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center, and Fort Kaskaskia State Historic Site can all be found in southwestern Illinois.
- Abraham Lincoln at age 21, first arrived in Illinois in 1830. With only 1 year of formal schooling, it would have been hard to imagine that he’d later become attorney, state representative, congressman, and president.
- Illinois is known as the “Prairie State.”
- The Cahokia Courthouse, erected in 1740 is one of the few surviving structures visited by Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery.