Places in Kentucky: Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park

Basic Information

• Name: Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park
• Where: Hodgenville, KY
• Cost: Free
• More Info: National Park Service website

Directions

Getting to the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park is an easy 1 hour drive south from Louisville, Kentucky.  From Louisville just travel south on I-65.  At Elizabethtown turn on to Highway 61 towards Hodgenville.  At Hodgenville just follow the signs in town that lead south to the park.

Parking

The Abraham Lincoln National Historical Park is a popular tourist attraction with a lot of people coming and going.  There is a large parking lot that handled the amount of visitors the day I visited.

Narrative

A place that friends in Kentucky were telling me to visit was Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Park.  So I made the drive over to the park.  The first place I stopped to check out was the visitor center.  It was actually quite informative about Abraham Lincoln’s early years.  The Lincoln family had migrated to Kentucky over the decades from when their earliest ancestor Samuel Lincoln immigrated from England in 1637.

The family eventually ended up in Western Kentucky in the early 1800’s.  Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809 in a simple one-room cabin in Kentucky.

The area he was born was called Sinking Spring Farm just outside of Hodgenville.

The spring near his farm can still be seen to this day.  The park service has constructed a nice walkway to access it:

Here is the fresh water from the spring continuing to flow like it would have back during Abraham Lincoln’s childhood:

Abraham was born as the second child of Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln.  Thomas made a living of buying and leasing farms in Kentucky.  However, legal disputes caused him to lose all 200 acres of his land and at 8 years old, Abraham and his family moved to Indiana.

Inside the visitor center they had a display of what the inside of the Lincoln family one-room cabin would have looked like back in the early 1800’s:

The cabin that Abraham Lincoln grew up in may appear to be poor by today’s standards, but it was actually very much a middle class existence for frontier families that populated western Kentucky in the early 1800’s:

The visitor center also had a few personal possessions from the Lincoln family such as this Bible:

After reading all the displays in the visitor center, I then made my way over to the memorial where Lincoln’s cabin is located at.  Here is a sculpture that shows what the memorial looks like:

Here is a picture of the actual memorial:

In an effort to preserve Lincoln’s legacy, funds were raised to construct the memorial between 1907-1911 to protect what was believed to be Lincoln’s birthplace.  The memorial was contructed by John Russell Pope using neoclassical architecture.

The architecture for the memorial is extremely impressive, especially since it is constructed in the middle of rural western Kentucky:

Inside of the memorial is where Lincoln’s cabin is located. However, later research of the wood used to construct the cabin determined it was not Lincoln’s cabin, but it still is a good replica of what his childhood cabin would have looked like:

Something I found interesting was that the memorial was constructed 11 years before the Lincoln memorial in Washington, D.C., which means the Lincoln Memorial copied the design used for the memorial in Kentucky and not the other way around.

After seeing the cabin and reading the information signs there was nothing else left see in the memorial.  I spent probably 10-15 minutes inside before walking back outside and following the path back to the parking lot:

Here is one last picture I took of the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park from the parking lot:

Conclusion

Overall visiting the Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park was interesting.  The memorial itself was a bit underwhelming, but learning the history of Lincoln’s early life in the visitor center was fascinating.  Plus the drive through the rural hill country of western Kentucky made for a pleasant day out.  For anyone driving down I-65 and looking for a good highway break, I recommend making the detour over to Hodgenville to check out this interesting site.