What I've since learned is that these signs are rare.
The Lincoln Heritage Trail marks the migration of the future 16th president's family from central Kentucky to southern Indiana--and then finally to central Illinois.
The idea was conceived in the 1960s, as Andrew Ferguson explains in his Land of Lincoln, Adventures in Abe's America, by the American Petroleum Institute, to get people on the roads and to spend money on gasoline. The Old West Trail and the Washington Heritage Trail were similarly developed.
As for the Lincoln Trail, many sites were added that had nothing to do with the Great Emancipator, but they were added to attract folks to places such as Santa Claus, Indiana.
As for Cairo, I'm not a Lincoln expert, but Honest Abe probably didn't lay eyes on the now-bombed out Cairo--which is at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, until he steered a flatboat past it on his way to New Orleans on the "Father of Waters" in 1828.
As you can see in the picture, the southern route of the Lincoln Heritage Trail shares asphalt with the Illinois section of the Great River Road.
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