Monticello Railway Museum
Check pricesVolunteer-run railroad museum in central Illinois with a working yard and weekend train rides.

Photo: Bkleinf2, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped and resized.
Wander formal gardens dotted with more than 100 statues, then hike forest trails along the Sangamon River, all free, near Monticello.
515 Old Timber Road, Monticello, IL 61856 · Monticello, IL
Robert Allerton, a Chicago heir and art collector, spent decades turning his Piatt County estate into gardens around a Georgian Revival mansion, and gave it to the University of Illinois in 1946. Today the park has 14 formal gardens with more than 100 statues, plus about 500 acres of continuous forest along the upper Sangamon River with 14 miles of trails. Admission and parking are free, and the park is open sunrise to sunset all year.
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