Split-rail fences were used by pioneer farmers to confine their stock, or to prevent free-range livestock from getting into and damaging a crop field.

[4] It was ignored until 1865 when it was dismantled and shipped for public viewing to Chicago; Boston Common; and finally the private museum in New York City operated by showman P.T.

[3] The abandoned Lincoln farmstead was later settled by the Whitley family, who lived at the site for several generations; the Whiteleys built a dam across the Sangamon River to power a small flour mill.

The park contains mature second-growth bottomland timber, including black walnut trees; the Whitleys' pioneer cemetery; and the remains of the flour mill and dam on the Sangamon River.

[2] Abraham Lincoln himself described his life at the Lincoln Trail Homestead State Park and Memorial in this 1860 account, which he wrote for John L. Scripps of the Chicago Press and Tribune to be used as a campaign biography: March 1, 1830, Abraham having just completed his twenty-first year, his father and family, with the families of the two daughters and sons-in-law of his stepmother, left the old homestead in Indiana and came to Illinois.

His father and family settled a new place on the north side of the Sangamon River, at the junction of the timberland and prairie, about ten miles (16 km) westerly from Decatur.