SANGAMON RIVER

river formed by headstreams in northwestern Champaign County, Illinois, U.S. It flows southwesterly, bending around Decatur, where a dam impounds Lake Decatur, and turns west past Springfield, the state capital, and then north and west to join the Illinois River just north of Beardstown, after a course of 250 mi (400 km). The first Illinois home (1830) of Abraham Lincoln was on a bluff above the river, 7 mi southwest of Decatur; the site is now in the Lincoln Trail Homestead State Park. In 1831 Lincoln moved to New Salem on the Sangamon River, northwest of Springfield. That site is now within Lincoln's New Salem Historic Site.