New Salem is different. Once we train our eyes to appreciate the light and shadows and forms and colors here in this small refuge, we can find them everywhere. Spend some time and see the beauty of the landscape here in the great middle of America.
Today, New Salem's lanes are lined with trees and the sunlight plays among the leaves, but when the Village was active, it was part of the great American prairie. When approaching New Salem look out over the surrounding farmland and imagine what it must have been like for the earliest settlers surrounded by the vast prairie with nothing to obstruct their vision from a horizon that seemed to go on forever.