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Friday, April 15, 2005 10:17 AM CDT
Local tourism officials hoping Lincoln visitors will find way to Coles
By ROB STROUD, Staff Writer
CHARLESTON -- When the state began its Looking for Lincoln program in the late 1990s, Charleston was at the forefront of this effort to develop and promote historic places as tourism destinations.
The city, with the help of grants and donations, opened the Lincoln-Douglas Debate Museum in 2000 at the Coles County Fairgrounds, which hosted one of the 1858 debates between U.S. Senate candidates Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas. This museum became the only facility of its kind to chronicle all of these historic debates.
Five years after the Debate Museum's opening, the state is preparing to open its Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield on Tuesday. Local officials hope the highly anticipated museum will prompt its visitors to go looking for Lincoln in the Charleston area.
"It's really gratifying to see all this come to fruition," said Executive Director Cindy Titus of the Charleston Area Chamber of Commerce. Looking for Lincoln planning had always included the goal of tying in various communities' Lincoln sites with a presidential library and museum.
Titus, who recently toured the 40,000-square-foot museum in Springfield, said the entryway there includes an oversized map that spotlights other Lincoln sites, including the Debate Museum and Lincoln Log Cabin State Historic Site south of Charleston.
Lincoln Log Cabin Site Superintendent Matthew Mittelstaedt, who also toured the new museum, said many of the exhibits include panels encouraging museumgoers to visit historic places on which the exhibits are based.
Mittelstaedt was happy to see a Lincoln Log Cabin photo on one of these panels. This site, administered by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, was the 1840s home of Lincoln's father and stepmother, Thomas and Sarah Bush Lincoln.
"I think it will benefit all of our Lincoln-related sites and tourism in Illinois," Mittelstaedt said.
Both Titus and Mittelstaedt were impressed by the museum's features, which include two special effects theaters as well as life-like latex statues of Lincoln and other figures from his era.
Titus said she was particularly interested in a high-tech map that showed the progression of the Civil War within two minutes, displaying rapidly shifting battle lines and mounting casualty figures.
As a historian, Mittelstaedt said he enjoyed an exhibit that mixed a living actor with holographic images of Lincoln and his history. He said this exhibit, in an entertaining fashion, emphasized the importance of preserving the artifacts housed in the library.
"I think it's really going to catch the imagination of visitors," Mittelstaedt said of the presidential library and museum.
Contact Rob Stroud at rstroud@jg-tc.com or 348-5734.
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