Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site

Abraham Lincoln by National Parks Service

In the fall of 1808, Thomas and Nancy Lincoln settled on the 348 acre Sinking Spring Farm. Two months later on February 12, 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born in a one-room log cabin near the Sinking Spring. Here the Lincolns lived and farmed before moving to land a few miles away at Knob Creek. The area was established by Congress on July 17, 1916. An early 19th century Kentucky cabin, symbolic of the one in which Lincoln was born, is preserved in a memorial building at the site of his birth.

Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site (Site) commemorates the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln, sixteenth president of the United States. The Site contains 116.5 acres, representing approximately one-third of a 348.5-acre farm along the South Fork of Nolin Creek that was purchased by Lincoln's father, Thomas Lincoln, in 1808. On the Site is a Beaux-Arts classical granite and marble memorial building containing the traditional Lincoln birth cabin. A notable natural feature on the Site is a spring that emerges from a rock ledge and flows into a deep sinkhole. The spring is adjacent to the knoll on which the Memorial Building is located. Roughly triangular in shape, the Site is located in the rolling hill country of LaRue County, Kentucky, three miles south of Hodgenville, the county seat, and approximately 50 miles south of Louisville. U.S. Highway 31E/Kentucky Highway 61 bisects the Site on a north-south axis.