July 31st, 2021 … Summer of Fun continues! Day 4 Route 66 Caravan – Springfield, IL

We are staying just south of Springfield IL at Double J Campground in Chatham. We took a narrated car tour of Lincoln’s Tomb and Oak Ridge Cemetery.

The Lincoln Tomb State Historic Site is the final resting place of Abraham Lincoln, his wife Mary, and three of their four sons: Edward, William, and Thomas (known as "Tad"). Their eldest son, Robert Lincoln, is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Also on the site is the public receiving vault, where final funeral services were held for President Lincoln on May 4, 1865. Constructed about 1860, the vault is at the base of a hill north of the Tomb. The Lincoln Tomb was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960; it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966. The Tomb is operated by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency. The Tomb, designed by sculptor Larkin Mead, is constructed of brick sheathed with Quincy granite. 

The base is 72 feet square with large semi-circular projections on the north and south sides. Double sets of stairs lead to a terrace, above which rises the 117-foot-tall obelisk. At the corners of the shaft, large pedestals serve as bases for four bronze sculpture groups, each representing one of the four Civil War military services—infantry, artillery, cavalry, and navy. A taller base on the obelisk’s south side holds a heroic bronze statue of Lincoln.

In front of the Tomb is a bronze reproduction of Gutzon Borglum’s marble head of Lincoln, which is displayed in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. His nose is untarnished, because so many people touch or rub it for luck!

Interior rooms of the Tomb are finished in highly polished marble trimmed with bronze. The south entrance opens into a rotunda, where hallways lead to the burial chamber. The rotunda and corridors contain reduced-scale versions of important Lincoln statues, as well as plaques with excerpts from Lincoln’s farewell address to Springfield, the Gettysburg Address, and his Second Inaugural Address.

President Lincoln’s remains rest in a concrete vault ten feet below the marble floor of the burial chamber. A massive granite cenotaph marking the gravesite is flanked by the presidential flag and the flags of states in which Lincoln's ancestors and Abraham Lincoln himself resided. Crypts in the chamber’s south wall hold the remains of Mary, Edward, Willie and Tad Lincoln.

The remains of President Lincoln and his son Willie were placed in the receiving vault from May 4 through December 21, 1865. From December 21, 1865 through September 19, 1871, the remains of the President and two of his sons, Eddie and Willie, were moved into a temporary above-ground tomb constructed on the northeast side of the hill where the current tomb now stands. Tad Lincoln, the President’s youngest son, died on July 15, 1871. His remains were the first to be interred in today’s Tomb, followed by those of his father and his two brothers on September 19, 1871.

Mary Lincoln died at her sister's home in Springfield on July 16, 1882. She was laid to rest with her husband and dear sons a few days later.

Construction of the Lincoln Monument began in 1868. It was dedicated in 1874 in a ceremony attended by President U.S. Grant. Due to design and construction faults, the Tomb was extensively rebuilt in 1900-01 and again in 1930-31. Because of security concerns (thieves attempted to steal Lincoln’s body in 1876), President Lincoln’s remains were moved to their final resting place, below the floor of the burial chamber, after the first renovation.

The second reconstruction also involved a complete redesign of the interior of the tomb, including creation of the inside corridors, installation of the marble and bronze ornamentation, and addition of the small statues. The Borglum bust outside the Tomb was installed at the same time.

Oak Ridge Cemetery is the second most visited cemetery in the county, only after Washington, D.C.’s Arlington National Cemetery. Nearly one million visitors come to the cemetery each year to pay their respects. These high visitation number are largely due to Abraham Lincoln’s tomb.

We learned a great deal about the history of the Oak Ridge Cemetery. It is distinctly different from the other cemeteries in the area, state and country, mainly because of Lincoln’s Tomb. The grounds cover 365 acres of beautiful rolling land filled with over 10 variations of Oak trees.

Since 1865, the cemetery has grown to be the largest Municipal cemetery in the state of Illinois, encompassing 365 acres of beautiful rolling prairie land, thousands of hardwoods and conifers, and over 75,000 interments. Along with our beloved sixteenth president, Abraham Lincoln, there are over 70 other notable dignitaries interred at Oak Ridge.

Most of the stately gravestones are shaped into obelisks or headless angels or urns draped with stone cloth. Among these classic markers of memory, though, are surprises—grave markers that simulate the natural world that surrounds them. They are shaped like tree stumps.

Some tree-stump markers take the shape of a cross. Others are simpler, four or five feet tall, with their branch shorn off. One is a short, cleanly cut stump, like one a hiker might rest on during a long walk through the woods. They tend to surprise people who come across them, since they’re not quite what we expect to see at the head of a grave. They date mostly to 1880s to 1920s, when funerary art in the US was moving away from the grand mausoleums and obelisks found elsewhere.

We also found some unique gravestones in the shape of chairs. Some would call them Mourning Chairs, but the symbolism they have adorned on them is amazing!

We drove to Lincoln’s home, which is part of the National Historic Site. The Lincoln Home was the first and only home Abraham Lincoln owned and still stands today, with much of the original structure, walls, and foundations remaining. The Lincoln Home in itself in an artifact, as well as a place of stories and memories that tell the stories of Abraham Lincoln and his family. Its growth and expansion mirrors the growth of the Lincoln family from a young couple with a baby to a presidential family bound for the White House, as well as Lincoln's growth from a young lawyer of humble origin to the highest position in the US.

Since we are in Springfield, we need to eat a famous place … so, its dinner at Cozy Dog Drive-In! This deep fried golden weenie made its first official appearance on a stick right here. Back in the early 1940s, Waldmire Jr. visited Muskogee, Oklahoma, where he encountered an unusual sandwich called the “corn-dog.” Unlike the fried corndogs which would rise to prominence at the Cozy Dog Drive In, this sandwich featured a wiener baked into a cornbread and lacked the modern-day corndog’s signature stick. Ed thought the corn-dog was good, but took too long to prepare in a traditional baking oven. The problem, he recognized, was being able to cover the hotdog in batter and cook it in a short time.

In the fall of 1941, Ed shared his unusual sandwich anecdote with fellow student Don Strand, whose father was in the bakery business, and then thought little more of it. Five years later, while stationed at Amarillo Airfield with the Air Force, Ed received a letter from Don following up on the conversation: in the intervening time, Don had created something of a Frankenstein’s monster. “To my surprise he had developed a mix that would stick on a wiener while being french-fried,” Ed recalled. “He wondered if he could send some down that I could try in Amarillo. Having plenty of spare time, I said ‘yes.’”

Using cocktail forks as sticks and the USO kitchen as his laboratory, Ed got right to work on his new craft. He called his original creation the “crusty cur,” and it became a popular snack at the local USO and airfield. Ed and Don sold thousands of their crusty curs before Ed was honorably discharged in the spring of 1946. After he arrived home, Ed decided to continue selling his stick-adorned-dogs in his hometown of Springfield. Naturally, his wife disliked the objectively less-appetizing “crusty curs” and requested a name change. 

After an arduous process, the duo landed on the name “Cozy Dogs,” and on June 16, 1946, the Cozy Dog made its official debut at the Lake Springfield Beach House. Later that year, the Cozy Dog made its first fair appearance at the Illinois State Fair. Its residence then bounced around for a few years, before finding its permanent home in 1949: the Cozy Dog Drive In on Route 66.

Another great day of touring with Yankee RV Tours!