this image shows the interior of our Making a Home exhibit, with a covered wagon on the right.

Digital Exhibits

Read the rich histories featured in our Challenges, Choices, and Change as well as Abraham Lincoln in McLean County exhibits from anywhere!

Land Acknowledgment Statement

The land we call McLean County is the ancestral land of many Native groups, beginning with the Paleoindians 12,000 years ago, and most recently Algonquin-speaking groups, including the Kickapoo, who were forced west from this area in the 1830s. Other groups in this area include (but are not limited to) the Peoria, Kaskaskia, Piankashaw, Wea, Miami, Mascouten, Odawa, Sauk, Mesquaki, Lenape, Potawatomi, Ojibwe, and Chickasaw Nations. These lands were and are the traditional territory of these Native Nations prior to their forced removal; and these lands continue to carry the stories of these Nations and their struggles for survival and identity.

This statement was drafted in collaboration with Lester Randall, Tribal Chairman of the Kickapoo Tribe in Kansas, and Nichole Boyd, Director of the Native American House at UIUC.

Virtual Walkthrough

In addition to the exhibit websites below, you can take a virtual walk through the exhibits here. Throughout the galleries you will see dots that connect you back to this website, and within this website you will find links out to view objects in the virtual exhibit. Enjoy!

Challenges, Choices, and Change

This exciting 5,000-square-foot exhibit in four galleries explores the experience of living, working, farming, and creating community in McLean County. These exhibits are brought to life through the objects local residents used in day-to-day life, beautiful imagery, and the true-life stories of the diverse people who lived here and made McLean County a thriving community.

Making a Home

The stories told here reveal the challenges faced by the diverse people who have made McLean County their home. These are stories of determination and hard choices, of the ways traditions were maintained and new ones invented, of how lives unfolded and changed—of Making a Home.

A Community in Conflict

Since the time that people first occupied McLean County, conflict has been part of its history. Explore the stories presented here to learn about major and minor conflicts that have shaped the social fabric of McLean County. Learn about opposing points of view held by local citizens and decide for yourself who had the power.

Working for a Living

New technologies, more than anything else, have changed the jobs of those who have worked in McLean County.

Farming in the Great Corn Belt

Farming was the reason the first settlers who came to McLean County in the early 1800s chose to do so. They arrived after thousands of years of farming by Native people. McLean County farmers faced constant change and numerous challenges. The availability and cost of land, the arrival of the railroad, new science and technology, as well as economic and natural forces had a dramatic impact on their successes and failures. With determination, resourcefulness, and innovation McLean County farmers met these challenges.

Abraham Lincoln in McLean County

From 1837 until he left for Washington, D.C. in early 1861, Abraham Lincoln spent more time in Bloomington than anywhere else other than his hometown of Springfield. And it was here, assisted by a group of devoted McLean County friends, that Lincoln was vaulted to national prominence as the leader of the reinvigorated anti-slavery movement – the new Republican Party.