Apr 14, 2015 was the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, which means you’ve probably been bombarded with endless articles and links about the event. Well, let me add my own two cents. I once told you about how I’ve visited many Lincoln-related sites over the years from the village of New Salem, Illinois and the capital city of Springfield where his home and the must-see President Library & Museum is located (and let’s not forget his tomb as well) to Bellevue Place (where Mary Todd Lincoln was institutionalized) and Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. But Illinois, known as “The Land of Lincoln,” has more to offer than just the historic sites of Lincoln. There’s also some unusual attractions.
Visitors traveling through the boring landscape of Illinois can stop and check out some interesting statues of Honest Abe. Appropriately located in the city of Lincoln near old Route 66, the “Rail Splitter Covered Wagon,” created by Wisconsin artist David Bentley, is a fiberglass statue of Lincoln sitting and reading a law book. If you want to see the World’s Largest Statue of Abraham Lincoln (standing over 72 feet tall), it is located in the very small town of Ashmore. Created by Minnesota artist Bob Edzett, the statue fell into disrepair before its restoration in 2005. “Abe’s Garden” was then sold in 2013 and its future is unknown. It was built in 1968-69 to mark the 110th anniversary of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, an event that is also commemorated with its own statues, this time created out of bronze by artist Jerry McKenna, in the town of Alton, the site of their last debate for the U.S. Senate. Then there is the probably the world’s only statue of Lincoln (also made of bronze) posing with a pig in the town of Taylorville. Why a pig, you ask? Well, a clean-shaven Lincoln (that’s what he looked like in the 1850s) once worked as a young attorney in the courthouse. When Lincoln was arguing a case, some pigs under the courthouse’s floorboards started squealing, and Lincoln asked the judge for a “writ of quietus” to shut them up. Taylorville definitely tries to sell their “pig story” to the tourists. Besides the statute, Lincoln and the pigs are depicted in murals and other pieces of art throughout the town.
