Elkhart: The Governor's Hill and an Illinois Lincoln Town
Near Springfield, Illinois
Elkhart is a village of only a few hundred people in Logan County, Illinois, but it sits on a small hill that makes it visible for miles across the flat prairie. The town's most notable feature is Elkhart Hill, one of the highest points in central Illinois, where Governor Richard Oglesby is buried. Oglesby served three separate terms as governor of Illinois in the latter half of the nineteenth century and was a close friend of Abraham Lincoln.
The area around Elkhart was Lincoln country. Lincoln practiced law on the Eighth Judicial Circuit, which covered Logan County, and passed through these central Illinois towns repeatedly in the eighteen fifties. The Elkhart area sits on the original Route Sixty-Six alignment, which followed the old Pontiac Trail, the road that had connected Chicago and Saint Louis for generations before the federal highway system gave it a single number.
