Springfield

Settlers arrived in the 1820s on the prairie beside Spring Creek, a tributary of the Sangamon River, and the town was named Springfield in 1832. The state legislature chose it to replace Vandalia as capital, a move completed in 1839, helped by the lobbying of nine Sangamon County legislators who included the young Abraham Lincoln. The same year Lincoln moved to Springfield to practise law. Here he married Mary Todd, raised his sons, bought the only house he ever owned, and rose through state and national politics. In 1858 he gave his House Divided speech at the capitol, and in February 1861 he took a train east to become president. He came back in May 1865, after his assassination, to be buried at Oak Ridge Cemetery.

The new Capitol, finished in 1888, confirmed Springfield as a government town, and coal mining and farming supported it into the 20th century. In August 1908 a white mob attacked Black residents and their homes and businesses over three days; at least sixteen people died. The violence, in Lincoln's own city, helped lead to the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People the next year. Route 66, opened in 1926, ran through the city and brought diners and motels.

In later decades the city came to depend on state government, hospitals and medical education. The Old State Capitol was taken apart and rebuilt in the 1960s, and the presidential library and museum opened in 2005, making tourism a growing part of the city's life.

Lincoln is everywhere in Springfield: on street names, statues, shop signs and the tourist trail, and in the rangers' and re-enactors' talks at his home and in the museum. The city takes its role as his home seriously, and historians come to use the library's papers. The state's political life is also part of local culture, with the legislature in session for much of the spring.

Beyond Lincoln, the Dana–Thomas House was one of the largest early commissions of Frank Lloyd Wright's studio, and the poet Vachel Lindsay was born in the city, in the house that remained his home all his life. The State Fair in August is the biggest event of the year, drawing farmers and families from across Illinois. Route 66 nostalgia is strong, celebrated in a Route 66 film festival and in roadside diners that have survived since the highway's heyday.

Springfield has a sizeable African American community, and the 1908 riot is now remembered with markers and a memorial. Daily manners are friendly and unhurried, typical of the small-city Midwest, and local food habits are a point of fierce pride.

About 115,000 people live in the city and around 200,000 in the wider metropolitan area, which spreads across Sangamon and Menard counties. State government is the largest employer; health care comes next, and the hospitals and the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine make the city a regional medical centre. The University of Illinois Springfield and Lincoln Land Community College add students.

Most people live in houses with gardens in neighbourhoods built around the old centre or in newer suburbs to the west and south-west, and nearly everyone drives. Downtown is busy on weekdays when offices and the legislature are working and quiet in the evenings, though restaurants and bars have grown in number around the square. Housing is cheaper than in Chicago, and the region surrounding the city is farmland of corn and soybeans.

Local talk turns to state politics, the cost of the state's pensions, the condition of downtown and the summer heat. Weekends often revolve around high school sport, church, Lake Springfield and, in August, the fair.

Springfield's best-known dish is the horseshoe, first served in the city in the early 20th century. It is an open sandwich: thick toast topped with meat — originally ham, now often a hamburger patty — then a heap of chips and a rich cheese sauce. A smaller version is called a ponyshoe. Almost every diner and bar in town serves one, and locals argue over whose cheese sauce is best.

Route 66 left its mark too. The Cozy Dog Drive In has served corn dogs on a stick since the 1940s, and the Maid-Rite shop on the old route sells loose-meat sandwiches of crumbled seasoned beef from a 1920s building. Springfield also spells its chilli with two Ls, a local quirk that some explain by the city's old chilli parlours.

The rest of the food scene is typically Midwestern: steakhouses, family diners, pork tenderloin sandwiches and sweetcorn in season, with farmers' markets downtown in summer and fair food — corn dogs, lemonade and pork chops — at the State Fair.