The sights and sounds of life in the 1830s will greet visitors to Lincoln New Salem State Historic Site during the site’s Fall Festival on the weekend of Oct. 29-30.
Costumed interpreters will demonstrate daily tasks such as making soap, weaving baskets, spinning wool and dyeing cloth. Experts will demonstrate the use of black-powder rifles.
Visitors can see meat smoking in the historic site’s period smokehouses or stop by a cabin to smell wild game being cooked. A visit to the tavern’s cellar will reveal how fruits and vegetables were preserved during the winter. And kettle corn will be prepared over an open fire.
The free event lasts from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. both Saturday and Sunday.
Lincoln’s New Salem, administered by the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, is a re-creation of the 1830s log village where Abraham Lincoln lived for six years.
It is located along Route 97 about two miles south of Petersburg and 20 miles northwest of Springfield, and is open Wednesday through Sunday for free public tours.