Lincoln in Strange Places

Tucked away beneath the palm trees and orange groves lies a shrine to a Civil War hero.

Abraham Lincoln’s memory found a home in a place where he never visited nor likely knew much about – downtown Redlands.

In 1880, an old Derbyshire England boy traveled across the contient to his new home in California. Robert Watchorn’s exodus came after more than a decade of back-breaking work in the coal mines of England. He started at age 11 making 27 cents per day and by age 23 he had enough. While admission into formal halls of education eluded him, Robert was a tireless intellectual who later became a Redlands magnate in city government, corporate affairs and philanthropy.

He was an unabashed admirer of President Lincoln.

“He is one of the finest spirits that ever came into the world … and he turned the currents of freedom into the souls of millions of men,” he said, among other long discourses and writings about Lincoln.

So in 1932, a shrine was dedicated not only to the President himself, but also to the memory of Robert’s son Emory who died in 1921 at age 26 – a casualty of the First World War.

The building, an architectural marvel in and of itself, boasts the largest collection of Civil War and Lincoln artifacts west of the Mississippi. Thousands of books on the war and the man line the halls of the museum. Lincoln’s authenticated signature sits on more than 20 documents of war correspondance and state matters there. Coins, maps, rifles, bullets, paintings, letters and scores of other items fill the shrine while documentaries pn the Civil War play on TVs in the background.

The most impressive part of the shrine though greets you as you walk through the door into the main rotunda. It is a bust of Lincoln, as impressive as the man himself. It’s as if he is greeting you and inviting you to come learn more.

In Redlands of all places … who would have thought.