The Tomb at Oak Ridge

Oak Ridge Cemetery opened in eighteen sixty, on rolling land north of the city where spring creek runs between old oaks. It was barely five years old when the most famous man in America was brought here to be buried. Abraham Lincoln's body arrived in Springfield on May third, eighteen sixty-five, after a twelve-day funeral train from Washington that stopped in city after city across the North.

He lay in state for one night in the old State Capitol. Then a long procession carried him here, to a hillside above the creek. Getting Lincoln settled permanently turned out to take decades.

His remains were moved no fewer than seventeen times before his family was finally satisfied. In eighteen seventy-six, a gang of Chicago counterfeiters attempted to steal the body and hold it for ransom. Secret Service agents foiled the plot, but the incident led the Lincoln Monument Association to hide the coffin, and in nineteen oh one it was sealed in a concrete vault ten feet below the burial room floor.

It has not moved since. The tomb itself is a granite structure designed by sculptor Larkin Mead, completed in eighteen seventy-four. A hundred-and-seventeen-foot obelisk rises from the center.

The interior walls are lined with marble from five states and four foreign countries. Sixteen marble pilasters mark Lincoln and his fifteen predecessors as president. At the entrance stands a bronze replica of Lincoln's head, sculpted by Gutzon Borglum, who later carved Mount Rushmore.

The nose on that head has been rubbed so many millions of times by visitors hoping for good luck that it shines like gold against the dark bronze. Mary Todd Lincoln is buried here. Three of their four sons rest beside her.

Their eldest son Robert chose Arlington National Cemetery.