Whitley family, who lived at the site for several generations; the Whiteleys built a dam across the Sangamon River to power a small flour mill. The state memorial, created in 1938 on the Whitley site, now serves as a park and picnic area for the greater Decatur, Illinois metropolitan area. The park contains mature second-growth bottomland timber, including black walnut trees; the Whitleys' pioneer cemetery; and the remains of the flour mill and dam on the Sangamon River. The park was formally dedicated in 1957. Archeologists have not yet discovered any evidence of the exact location of the Lincoln family's 1830–1831 cabin, and the cabin may have been located within or slightly outside the state memorial boundary. Lincoln's description Abraham Lincoln himself described his life at the Lincoln Trail Homestead State Park and Memorial in this 1860 account, which he wrote for John L. Scripps of the Chicago Press and Tribune to be used as a campaign biography: March 1, 1830, Abraham having just completed his twenty-first year, his father and family, with the families of the two daughters and sons-in-law of his stepmother, left the old homestead in Indiana and came to Illinois. Their mode of conveyance was wagons drawn by ox-teams, and Abraham drove one of the teams. They reached the county of Macon, and stopped there some time within the same month of March. His father and family settled a new place on the north side of the Sangamon River, at the junction of the timberland and prairie, about ten miles (16 km) westerly from Decatur. Here they built a log cabin, into which they removed, and made sufficient of rails to fence ten acres of ground, fenced and broke the ground, and raised a crop of sown corn upon it the same year. These are, or are supposed to be, the rails about which so much is being said just now, though these are far from being the first or only rails ever made by Abraham. References External links Lincoln Trail Homestead State Park and Memorial Protected areas of Macon County, Illinois State parks of Illinois Abraham Lincoln National Heritage Area Monuments and memorials in Illinois Protected areas established in 1938 1938 establishments in Illinois