Golf in Petersburg

Petersburg is the seat of Menard County, a small Illinois River community with intimate connections to Abraham Lincoln's early career in Illinois. New Salem State Historic Site, just three miles south on a bluff above the Sangamon River, reconstructs the village where Lincoln spent his formative years in the 1830s before moving to Springfield. Lincoln's surveying work and early law practice brought him repeatedly through Petersburg and the surrounding township. Shambolee Golf Course on South Shore Drive sits along a lake, offering a setting shaped by the same waterways that Lincoln navigated as a young flatboatman and county surveyor. The community's golf culture reflects the midwestern combination of practicality and recreation, where courses are built and maintained with community investment and the straightforward purpose of providing quality sport for working families.