Stories and reflection have always drawn on landscape. Through oral tradition and the written word, people explore their ties to the land — city or countryside, large or small, designed or grown up by use. Writers as different as Rachel Carson and Wendell Berry on the environment, Jane Jacobs on how cities work and Carl Sauer on how landscapes take shape show how writing can change the way we see our surroundings and our place in them. Literature looks at how people and nature respond to change: what has been lost, what remains, what the future might hold.
A young Charlie (Carl) Sandburg in his confirmation photo; he grew up in the Elim Lutheran Church in Galesburg, Illinois. Photographer unknown. NPS / Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site Archives.
A poet of the prairie and the city
"I was born on the prairie, and the milks of its wheat, the red of its clover, the eyes of its women, gave me song and a slogan." — Carl Sandburg, "Prairie," July 1918
Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site, in Flat Rock, North Carolina, was the first national park unit to honor the life and work of an American poet. Sandburg — writer, poet, lecturer and musician, and one of the most celebrated of the 20th century — won the Pulitzer Prize in two different fields: history, for Abraham Lincoln: The War Years (published 1939), and poetry, for Complete Poems (published 1950).
Connemara Goat Dairy was in the goat breeding business. Paula Sandburg wrote articles in scientific journals that described her method of breeding goats for increased milk production, and regularly attended the annual American Dairy Goat Association national conference. June Glenn, Jr. (NPS / Carl.
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1878 | Born January 6 in Galesburg, Illinois, the first son of hardworking Swedish immigrants |
| Youth | Left school at 13; worked many jobs; served in Puerto Rico in the Spanish-American War; then enrolled at Lombard College, where he was encouraged to write |
| 1912–1917 | Reporter for the Chicago Day Book; also wrote for the Chicago Daily News |
| 1923 | Began Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years, a two-volume account of Lincoln before the presidency, published two years later |
| 1939 | After thirteen more years of research, published the four-volume Abraham Lincoln: The War Years; it won the Pulitzer Prize in history in 1940 |
| 1945 | Moved with his wife, Lilian "Paula" Sandburg, from Michigan to North Carolina |
| 1959 | On February 12, Lincoln's 150th birthday, became the first private citizen to address a joint session of Congress |
| 1967 | Died, after 22 years at Connemara |
As a reporter, Sandburg covered industrial Chicago: the lack of child labor laws, dangerous workplaces and racial conflict, including the Chicago race riots of 1919. He argued that economic inequality lay at the root of social conflict, and he wrote about poverty, immigration and civil rights — pressing for education, job training and equal access to housing, and showing both people's hardships and their endurance.
Reporting sharpened his voice. He found outlets for his poems, such as Poetry magazine, often writing in free verse and sketching individuals and everyday life in Chicago — the "City of the Big Shoulders," as he named it in his prize-winning poem "Chicago." His writing is rooted in place: the American landscape, urban and rural, and what it does to the people who live in it.
Lincoln scholars including Carl Sandburg (left) during the Abraham Lincoln Sesquicentennial at the Library of Congress, February 12, 1959. Library of Congress.
Connemara
Two things drew the family south in 1945: the wish to escape harsh northern winters, and the need for better country for Paula's growing goat herd. They settled at Connemara, a farm an earlier owner had named in 1900 after a region of western Ireland. Its rural setting let the family concentrate on their work and passions.
Connemara in spring. NPS / Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site.
The land held woodlands, pastures, ponds, orchards, trails, a winding drive, fences, vegetable and flower gardens, countless flowers and shrubs, and views of the southern Appalachians. The main house was built in 1838 by Christopher Memminger, Secretary of the Treasury for the Confederacy; dozens of outbuildings were added over time to serve the working farm.
At Connemara Sandburg published several books of poetry, his autobiography, a one-volume Abraham Lincoln and his only novel, Remembrance Rock. While writing prolifically through the 1950s, he hiked the woods, walked the meadows and climbed nearby Big Glassy Mountain.
Goats still live at the site and help manage it. NPS / Victoria Stauffenberg.
Paula Sandburg's goat dairy
- The Sandburgs arrived with 150 goats; by the early 1950s the herd had doubled.
- For more than 30 years, Paula owned and ran a premier goat dairy, breeding for higher milk production. She described her methods in scientific journals and went every year to the American Dairy Goat Association's national conference.
- The barn complex was the busiest part of the farm, and the herds reshaped the land: pastures and fences were reorganized and outbuildings reconfigured.
A landscape left partly wild
Nature ran through Sandburg's life and writing, and the family's care of Connemara reflected it. Natural and man-made change was welcomed rather than resisted. Additions and removals were informal and flexible — some ground was tended, some left alone, depending on need, interest, labor and time — and the land was valued for its wildness.
A site plan with management recommendations for the residence area, from the 1993 Cultural Landscape Report. NPS / Susan Hart, Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site Cultural Landscape Report, 1993, p. 160.
The Main House and flower garden at Connemara: a wraparound panorama shown flattened. NPS / Victoria Stauffenberg.
The park today
Connemara was named a National Historic Landmark and became a park unit the year after Sandburg died. Local legislators, helped by Paula Sandburg, worked for its authorization, and the site opened to the public in 1974. It covers about 250 acres, restored to its appearance in roughly 1960–1967, and its buildings, roads, gardens, woods and pastures remain where they were.
Visitors can:
- tour the Sandburg home
- hike the trails
- visit the farm and the dairy goats
- take part in the arts: a Sandburg Writer-in-Residence program, a yearly poetry contest, summer theater, sing-alongs and poetry readings
Carl Sandburg and his guitar. Photographer unknown. NPS / Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site Collection.
The cultural landscape of Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site, with the main house. NPS.
Sandburg treated every person as an individual with a story worth telling. He wrote about the cities of his native Midwest and, later, about his quiet farm in western North Carolina, and his themes of everyday American life still resonate — the legacy that earned him the name "Poet of the People."
Sources
Based on "Literary Landscapes: Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site," National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The NPS article drew on the park's Foundation Document (2014), its Cultural Landscape Report (Susan Hart, 1993) and its 2006 amendment, the 1968 National Historic Landmark form and the Historic American Buildings Survey. Pictures an earlier version of this page left out were restored on 2026-09-26. The Park Service's panoramas, lost when the page was imported, were recovered from NPGallery, where they are marked public domain (2026-09-26).
Licence: CC0 1.0 (public domain) · Adapted from www.nps.gov
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