National parks in Illinois

2 story tan house with green shutters. Red, white, and blue striped bunting draped below its fence

83EXCELLENT NPS Photo

National Historic Site · IL

Lincoln Home National Historic Site

Springfield's Lincoln Home delivers something rarer than monument worship: a genuinely human portrait of Lincoln as neighbor, husband, and father rather than marble icon.

Small waterfall with brown rocks and green moss

74EXCELLENT NPS Photo / Alex Wiles

National Historic Trail · IA

Lewis & Clark National Historic Trail

At nearly 4,900 miles across 16 states, this is less a destination than a framework for road-tripping American history.

Red cliffs line a highway as seen from a high point with grass in the foreground.

62WORTH IT NPS photo

National Historic Trail · IL

Mormon Pioneer National Historic Trail

This is not a trail you hike end to end on a Tuesday afternoon.

large white house, green lawn, two trees in front

59WORTH IT NPS

National Historic Trail · AL

Trail Of Tears National Historic Trail

This is not a park you visit in a single afternoon but a 9-state corridor of conscience stretching from the Cherokee homelands of the Southeast to Oklahoma.

front of clocktower taken looking up with blue sky, sunny

57WORTH IT NPS Photo

National Historical Park · IL

Pullman National Historical Park

Pullman is a genuinely unusual entry in the national park system: a functioning residential neighborhood on Chicago's South Side where the history of American labor, race, and corporate paternalism is literally still standing around you.

Two African Americans sitting in a room and smiling toward the camera.

45NICHE NAACP Records, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

National Monument · IL

Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument

This is not a park in any recreational sense, and it should not be treated as one.

A grassy field surrounded by forest under a sunny sky with large white clouds.

37NICHE NPS Photo

National Historic Site · IL

New Philadelphia National Historic Site

New Philadelphia is a quiet, largely open field in rural Illinois, but the story it holds is genuinely extraordinary.

Historic photo of militia members standing in the remains of a burned building.

30NICHE Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture

National Monument · IL

Springfield 1908 Race Riot National Monument

This monument marks one of the ugliest episodes in Illinois history, a 1908 pogrom against Springfield's Black community that paradoxically sparked the founding of the NAACP.