Homestead Prairie Farm is built around the Trobaugh-Good House located at Rock Springs Conservation Area. It has been restored to let visitors explore rural life on the Grand Prairie of Illinois in 1860 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.
Originally constructed by an unknown builder around 1850 as a one room log house, its name comes from the first two families who lived there.
Joseph Trobaugh from Tennessee, his wife Elizabeth born in Illinois and their family were the first known occupants of the house and owned it from 1853 to 1866. Trobaugh was a farmer and sawmill operator. He changed the house by adding rooms and making other renovations.
Emanuel Good, a Civil War veteran, along with his wife and children were the second family to live there. The Goods owned the house from 1866 to 1903, selling it one year after Emanuel's death.
Today the house is furnished to reflect the lifestyle of the Trobaughs, their boarders, hired hands, and neighbors in 1860, whose lives were being affected by the important changes sweeping the nation in the last years before the Civil War.
Homestead Prairie Farm is part of the Rock Springs Conservation Area.
