This small park features a young Abraham Lincoln sitting on a split-rail bench, reading one of the partisan newspapers of the day. He would have been around 30, a lawmaker in the building behind him--the Illinois Capitol, or Statehouse, from 1836 to 1839. (The state government is now based in Springfield.)

The pavement is the western end of the National Road, completed in 1838. Vandalia's Madonna of the Trail Statue is less than a block away.

The bronze sculpture is by John McClarey.