Before his famous debates, before the Civil War rent the nation, before he helped end slavery and before his tragic assassination, Abraham Lincoln had New Salem. The tiny central Illinois village ...

and the Illinois Capital Development Board (CDB) announced that the money is going to Lincoln’s New Salem, the recreation of the log cabin village Abraham Lincoln lived in for six years.

New Salem is a reconstruction of a village where Abraham Lincoln lived from 1831 to 1837. The $8 million in funding comes from Rebuild Illinois, a capital plan that addresses state facilities.

Decades before the Witch Trials gave the seaside town of Salem immortality, Conant was a fisherman and salter, and a union organizer largely left out of history books for close to 400 years.