Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park

Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park in Hodgenville, Kentucky preserves two sites associated with the early childhood of the 16th President of the United States, who was born on February 12, 1809, on the Sinking Spring Farm in what is now LaRue County. The main unit of the park, on Lincoln Farm Road off US-31E, is centered on a neoclassical granite memorial building completed in 1911 and dedicated by President William Howard Taft. The memorial — constructed in a style influenced by the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. — encases a symbolic log cabin representing the type in which Lincoln was born, with 56 granite steps leading to the entrance, one for each year of the president's life. The original Sinking Spring, from which the farm takes its name, flows continuously below the memorial knoll and is accessible via a short wooded path from the main plaza. Rangers at the Visitor Center screen an orientation film tracing Lincoln's Kentucky childhood and lead summer interpretive programs that connect Lincoln's birth to the broader context of frontier Kentucky life in the early 19th century. A second park unit — the Knob Creek Farm — is located 10 miles north of the main site and preserves the farm where the Lincoln family relocated when Abraham was two years old and where he spent his formative years through age seven. At Knob Creek, a reconstructed period log cabin on the farm site, a wayside interpretive trail, and seasonal demonstrations bring Lincoln's Kentucky boyhood years to life with more agricultural context. Both units can be combined into a comfortable half-day itinerary for visitors interested in American presidential history, and the park is located 50 miles south of Louisville via US-31E.