Abraham Lincoln justly has several national park sites devoted to him, including the Lincoln Home National Historic Site in Springfield, Illinois. This site preserves the house that Lincoln and his family lived in while Lincoln rose to prominence first as a lawyer in the Illinois capital, then as a politician, and finally as the president-elect.

Visitors to the Lincoln Home should first stop at the visitor center, where they can watch two different films. The first offers a nice summary of Lincoln’s life from the time he moved to Springfield to the time he left the city for Washington, D.C. as the newly elected president. The film explains that he came to the town with little money, but became a well-respected and rather wealthy lawyer, who also entered into state and national politics. Lincoln also met his wife, Mary Todd, in Springfield and raised his family there. The second film offers a look inside the Lincoln Home, although you can also see the front desk at the visitor center to secure tickets for a tour of the home.

Even though the Lincoln Home is the centerpiece of the national park, the site preserves four blocks around the home, so visitors can meander the old streets and get a glimpse of what the area would have looked like in the mid-1800s. If you squint your eyes a bit to block out the more modern buildings in the background, it almost looks as though you have stepped back in time and might see Lincoln himself walking out the front door of his house with his stovepipe hat on his head. Each of the houses on the national park site is a lovely building with a plaque outside that describes the former residents and their relationship to the Lincolns, so make sure you spend at least a few minutes looking at the different houses. A few of these houses even have small exhibits inside.

The Lincoln Home itself is a Dijon mustard, two-story home with green shutters. The interior is nicely decorated and classy, but without pretension. Our tour was a bit cramped, but informative. The guide provided some nice portraits of what the Lincoln family’s life might have looked like and pointed out some interesting items in the house and their significance. For example, it was fascinating to see Lincoln’s small desk in his bedroom, a desk at which he worked into the wee hours of the morning, according to accounts of neighbors.

The Lincoln Home National Historic Site is a worthy national park site and is certainly worth a visit. It offers an up-close look at one of the United States’s greatest presidents and allows you to visit the place where he once lived and worked.

Tips: First, if you’d like to go on the tour, be sure to get there earlier in the day so that you are able to get tickets. They are first-come, first-served, and they sell out fairly quickly, especially during busy times. Second, the national park site is next to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, so you can pair the Lincoln Home with a visit to the library.