Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center
Survivor voices, personal artifacts, a German rail car, and human-rights galleries connect the Holocaust’s chronology to choices made by individuals and institutions.
Illinois, United States: places and wildlife — page 4
Browse the published Explore collection for Illinois, United States. Open a discovery for its field guide, practical details, and background.
Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum
Full-scale environments, original artifacts, political cartoons, theaters, and a research library reconstruct Lincoln’s life while exposing how public memory is made.
Illinois State Museum
Fossils, Ice Age environments, Indigenous archaeology, decorative arts, and changing exhibitions explain Illinois as both a natural system and a human place.
National Museum of Mexican Art
Ancient forms, devotional objects, modern painting, photography, prints, and Chicago-made work present Mexican culture as plural, contemporary, and transnational.
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
Changing exhibitions, performance, postwar art, and a terraced Josef Paul Kleihues building make every visit a different proposition about the present.
Adler Planetarium
Historic telescopes, immersive domes, hands-on astronomy, and Chicago’s lakefront horizon connect everyday observation with planetary science.
American Writers Museum
Manuscripts, typewriters, sound, games, changing exhibitions, and a long chronological wall explore how American writing is made, circulated, and contested.
Lincoln Home National Historic Site
Lincoln’s Springfield house and four preserved blocks reveal family life, neighborhood relationships, legal work, and the social world behind a presidency.
Pullman National Historical Park
A planned company town, railcar works, landmark strike, Black labor history, and surviving row houses turn an intact neighborhood into industrial evidence.
Old State Capitol State Historic Site
The 1839 capitol’s recreated legislative rooms frame Lincoln’s House Divided speech, legal career, and the rough mechanics of antebellum Illinois government.
Lincoln's New Salem State Historic Site
Log buildings, workshops, farms, and a wooded Sangamon River ridge reconstruct the commercial village where Lincoln worked before moving to Springfield.
Ulysses S. Grant Home State Historic Site
The furnished brick house given to Grant after the Civil War connects national fame with family life, Galena neighbors, and a steep Mississippi River town.
Dana-Thomas House State Historic Site
More than four hundred pieces of Wright-designed art glass, furniture, and ornament make Susan Lawrence Dana’s house an unusually intact total work.
Indiana Bat
A small social bat winters in a few cold caves, migrates to summer forest roosts, and carries the name of the state where science first described it.
Ohio Buckeye
Ohio’s namesake tree is a small-to-medium woodland understory species recognized by five leaflets, upright yellow-green flower clusters, and mahogany seeds marked with a pale eye.
Lakeside Daisy
A rare Great Lakes endemic can turn nearly barren alvar gold for a single synchronized week, surviving in thin soil over limestone where few flowering plants tolerate heat, wind, and drought.
Great Lakes Piping Plover
A palm-sized shorebird nests almost invisibly on Great Lakes beaches, where one footprint, loose dog, or sudden water rise can matter.
Lake Sturgeon
An armor-plated fish can live for more than a century, migrating from Lake Winnebago into rocky rivers for a brief, spectacular spring spawn.
Walleye
Minnesota’s state fish is a low-light predator whose famous eyes, seasonal movements, and lake-by-lake management make it more interesting than a dinner plate.
Rusty Patched Bumble Bee
A once-common Upper Midwest pollinator now survives in scattered strongholds, including the Twin Cities, where an ordinary garden can become consequential habitat.
Carolina Wren
A warm-brown wren with a white eyebrow lives close to cover across South Carolina and serves as the state bird.
Carolina Wolf Spider
North America’s largest wolf spider patrols open ground after dark and is South Carolina’s official state spider.
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail
This large striped butterfly, South Carolina’s state butterfly, moves between tree canopies, flowers, puddles, and host plants.
Carolina Mantid
South Carolina’s state insect is a gray, green, or brown ambush predator of gardens, old fields, and woodland edges.
Baltimore checkerspot
Black wings checked with cream and orange identify a wet-meadow butterfly whose official status contrasts with its rarity in Maryland.
Baltimore oriole
Maryland’s orange-and-black state bird whistles from leafy edges and suspends a woven pouch nest near a branch tip.
Black-eyed Susan
Rough-haired stems and golden rays around a raised brown center make Maryland’s state flower a familiar open-ground wildflower.
White oak
Maryland’s state tree supports insects and wildlife; rounded leaf lobes and pale bark reward a slower look in mature woodland.
Brook Trout
Follow this jewel-colored char from shaded headwaters to Adirondack ponds, where water quality shapes its future.
Common Snapping Turtle
A rugged freshwater turtle is easiest to notice when it leaves the water to nest, not while it lies hidden below.
Sugar Maple
Recognize New York's state tree by more than its color: bark, paired buds, and leaf shape tell the whole story.