If you live in 62677, you have probably driven Route 125 past the Clayville sign a hundred times without stopping. Most weekends there is no reason to. The gate is closed, the parking lot is empty, and the Broadwell Inn just sits there behind the split-rail fence looking like a photograph of itself.
Then a Saturday comes when the gate is open, and the whole logic of the village shifts. Clayville is not a museum tucked next to Pleasant Plains. Pleasant Plains grew up around Clayville. Once you internalize that, the way you spend a September weekend here starts to look different.
The date on the brick that reframes the village
The Broadwell Inn at 12828 Route 125 is the oldest brick building in Sangamon County, built in 1824 by John Broadwell as a stagecoach stop on the road between Springfield and the Illinois River port at Beardstown. Springfield did not become the permanent state capital until 1837. Which means the tavern you drive past on your way to the grocery store predates the capital designation by thirteen years, and predates Illinois statehood by only six.
Broadwell named the settlement Claysville after Henry Clay, the Kentucky Whig politician he admired. That political loyalty pulled a young Springfield attorney named Abraham Lincoln into Broadwell's orbit. Legal records show Lincoln represented Broadwell in at least four separate cases, and any lawyer riding the Eighth Judicial Circuit between Springfield and Beardstown would have passed through the tavern on the regular.
The original village of Clayville did not survive the railroad. When the tracks bypassed the stagecoach road in the 1850s, the town emptied out, and by 1900 the only structure still standing was the brick tavern. The stagecoach road itself became Illinois Route 125 in the early 1900s.
That is the fact the current Pleasant Plains sits on top of. The village you live in is what filled in after the original town died.
What Clayville actually is on a normal weekend
The site the Pleasant Plains Historical Society reopened in 2010 is not just the tavern. Over the decades preservationists brought in other 19th-century buildings from around central Illinois and reassembled a working frontier village around the Broadwell Inn.
On a typical open weekend between April and September you can walk through:
- The 1824 Broadwell Inn itself, first-floor kitchen and barroom below, sleeping rooms above
- A one-room schoolhouse used for interactive early-education demonstrations
- Log cabins and outbuildings moved in from other Sangamon-area sites in the 1960s
- An agricultural museum in an old barn holding early-to-mid-1800s tools, including one artifact traced to the Donner party
- The restored main barn that now doubles as an event and wedding venue
The site operates on volunteer power, and tours run largely by appointment outside of festival days. It is worth calling ahead at 217-572-4984 rather than driving out cold.
The September weekend that pulls everyone back
The Clayville Fall Festival on September 19 and 20, 2026 is the annual weekend when the site runs at full capacity. Gates open at 9 a.m. both days. In past years the Pleasant Plains Historical Society has staged blacksmith and tinsmith demonstrations, period-artisan booths, kids' activities, a full slate of craft vendors, and food service running the length of the weekend. Live performers have included the Whip Guy's whip show and Professor Long Hair's magic lessons, and the Illinois 10th Volunteer Cavalry has camped on site with the cavalry chaplain leading Sunday morning services.
The festival is the practical answer to a question a lot of residents never think to ask, which is what the historical society does with the property the other fifty weekends of the year. The short answer is that Fall Festival admissions and vendor fees underwrite the tour season and the ongoing preservation work on the Broadwell Inn, which was named to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973 and declared one of the ten most endangered historic sites in Illinois in 2007. The site was rescued by a local nonprofit organized in 2009 under Jim Verkuilen and received Landmarks Illinois' advocacy award in 2012.
If you have lived in Pleasant Plains for a while and have not walked through the site since you were in grade school, this is the weekend to go back.
The Route 97 handoff to New Salem
Anyone planning a heritage day out of Pleasant Plains has a second stop sitting fifteen minutes north up Route 97 in Petersburg. Lincoln's New Salem State Historic Site at 15588 History Lane is the reconstructed village where Lincoln lived from 1831 to 1837, and it runs its own summer calendar of period-clothed interpreter programs. The 2026 Summer Frolic on June 13 opened the busy season with 19th-century daily-task demonstrations across the village.
The relevant point for a Pleasant Plains resident is not the historical content, which anyone with an Illinois grade-school education has been exposed to. It is the geography. Clayville and New Salem are the two ends of a single heritage corridor that runs through the village. Broadwell sued and got sued, Lincoln represented him, and Lincoln lived just up the road at New Salem during the same years Broadwell was running the tavern. You do not need to leave the west-Sangamon corridor to spend a full day inside that history.
The kitchen ring, honestly
The knock on Clayville from Tripadvisor reviewers is that food on-site is limited outside of festival weekends. That is a fair note, and it is also the reason a Pleasant Plains resident has an advantage a Springfield day-tripper does not. You already know where to eat.
The short list residents actually rotate through:
- Shepp's Bar & Grill for the breaded pork tenderloin and horseshoe, the two orders reviewers consistently flag as the reason to stop
- Stag-R-Inn for a competing horseshoe that has its own defenders
- Grainery at the top of most Yelp queries for the 62677 zip
- Parkside Tavern and Goose Pit rounding out the after-church, after-game, after-anything ring
For a Friday-night handoff into a Saturday heritage day, the short drive to Danenberger Family Vineyards in New Berlin plugs in. The winery appears on the Pleasant Plains live-music feed as a regular venue, which is what happens when your village is small enough that the nearest concert calendar is technically in the next town.
One September Saturday, mapped
Here is what the corridor looks like on the Fall Festival weekend if you live in the village and want to do it right:
- 8:30 a.m. Coffee at home. Do not eat much. You are going to be walking through a festival with food.
- 9:00 a.m. Gates open at Clayville. Walk the Broadwell Inn first, before the tour groups arrive from Springfield. The upstairs sleeping rooms are the ones you will remember.
- 10:30 a.m. Blacksmith and tinsmith demonstrations, agricultural museum, and craft vendors. Buy food from the festival stands rather than saving your appetite.
- 12:30 p.m. Drive fifteen minutes north on Route 97 to Lincoln's New Salem. Walk the reconstructed village while lunch settles. Interpreter cabins are staffed on weekends through the summer season.
- 3:00 p.m. Back to Pleasant Plains. Long afternoon at home, or a stop at Shepp's if the horseshoe is calling.
- 7:00 p.m. Danenberger in New Berlin if there is a Friday-Saturday show on the calendar. It is a twenty-minute drive from the village and closes the loop.
The math on that day is not the schedule. It is the geography. You have covered the two anchor heritage sites of central Illinois, eaten in your own village, and never crossed into Springfield.
What this actually says about living here
Most guides to Pleasant Plains treat the village as a bedroom community with a nice historic site nearby. Residents know better. The historic site is not nearby. It is the reason the village exists in its current footprint. Route 125 is the old stagecoach road. Route 97 is the corridor Lincoln walked between his adopted village and the county seat. The kitchens that residents actually eat in are three minutes from a building that was standing before Illinois had a permanent capital.
If you have been here long enough to stop noticing any of that, this is the September to stop and notice again.
When you are ready to talk real estate
If a weekend like this makes you think harder about what your home in Pleasant Plains is actually worth in a market where heritage-corridor addresses are still underpriced relative to what Springfield buyers eventually figure out, that is the conversation to have next. Melissa Vorreyer and the team at Melissa's Listings work the west-Sangamon corridor closely and can pull comps that account for the specific things that make 62677 different from a generic Springfield suburb. Get your instant home valuation to start the conversation.
