PEORIA MAGAZINE November 2023

“When bad weather was approaching, a junior member of the fire department — and, legend has it, an unmarried one — was sent up to the roof to check on the weather conditions and call the department with updates,” Welch said. Built in 1905, the Logan Coun ty Courthouse, a three-story stone, domed structure, is one of the oldest courthouses in the state. Logan County voters approved raising the county’s portion of the sales tax by half a percent in 2020 to provide funding to repair and restore the building. After being delayed by the pandemic, restoration work on the iconic copper dome and a fix for a leaky roof are expected to be completed this fall. The 24-foot-tall Railsplitter Covered Wagon is recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s largest covered wagon. The Mill Museum on Route 66 was built in the 1920s. It was one of the first diners along the iconic road. Dirt-track car racing fans flock to Lin coln Speedway, a quarter-mile track lo cated on the Logan County Fairgrounds. But another sport is king in Lincoln. Lincoln loves its basketball, specifically Lincoln High School basketball. Prep basketball fans across the state know about the legendary program, including current Railsplitters boys basketball coach Neil Alexander, a member of the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame who won his 900th career game last season. He’s one of only two boys basketball coaches in Illinois High School Association history who has won that many games. Meanwhile, led by standout junior guard Kloe Froebe, the Lincoln girls basketball team came within a victory of going undefeated and winning the Class 3A state championship last season. Coming off that 36-1 season, the Lincoln girls are a top contender for a state championship this coming year.

Shops and eateries in downtown Lincoln

Lincoln doesn’t have a chamber of commerce, but it does have LEAD, an acronym for Lincoln Economic Advance ment and Development, an organization of entrepreneurs and community leaders working to attract new businesses to town. According to the LEAD website, the top employers in town are Sysco, Cresco Labs, Eaton, International Paper, Lincoln Memorial Hospital and Integrity Data. The Lincoln Correctional Center also has a significant presence. A city named for Abraham Lincoln needs to have a museum dedicated to him. So says Ron Keller, who served as an alderman on the Lincoln City Council from 2017-21 and is the director and curator of the Lincoln Heritage Museum, located since 2014 on the campus of Lincoln College. With the closing of the college, the museum is the only operating entity on the campus. With a collection of rare and valuable artifacts that tell the story of the life and times of the nation’s 16th president, the museum is a drawing card, said Keller, who is a treasure trove of historic infor mation not only about Lincoln but other prominent folks in the city’s history. Some famous. Some notorious. “Did you know that Lincoln never lost an election in Logan County?” Keller said before quickly pivoting to the poet, novelist, playwright and activist Langston Hughes, who spent time in his formative years in Lincoln and has a historical marker dedicated to him in the city. “Langston wrote his first poem in 1916 when he was an eighth-grader

here at Central School,” Keller said. Lincoln also was the home of con victed bootlegger John “Coonhound Johnny” Schwenoha, a business asso ciate and friend of Chicago gangster Al Capone during Prohibition. Capone occasionally journeyed downstate to see “Coonhound Johnny,” who took him to Lincoln and Logan County hot spots and went hunting with him. MAKE A CALL, HITCH A RIDE, SHOOT SOME HOOPS

Lincoln has a long list of attractions for visitors to check out. Lincoln’s City Hall and firehouse were built in the same building in the 1880s. It’s one of the oldest operating firehouses in the U.S. On top of the firehouse is a phone booth. It’s nothing more than a land mark today, but back in the day, it was functional. The Railsplitter Covered Wagon, recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest covered wagon in the world, is located on the front lawn of the Lincoln Inn near historic Route 66. The wagon stands 24 feet tall

Steve Stein is a longtime Peoria area print journalist

114 NOVEMBER 2023 PEORIA MAGAZINE