Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site
Sinking Spring Farm
Hodgenville, Kentucky
At the site you see not a log cabin but a granite and marble structure. Fifty-six steps, symbolizing the number of years of Abraham Lincoln's life, lead to the front doors. Designed by architect John Russell Pope, the memorial building was constructed between 1909 and 1911 by the Lincoln Farm Association. In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson accepted the gift to the United States in an acceptance speech on Labor Day.
A reconstructed cabin which stands inside the memorial building dates to the 19th-century but is not the original. In 1919 Robert Todd Lincoln, the president's eldest son, referred to the "pretended pictures of the Lincoln Cabin. They easily indicate what it probably was, but the actual cabin was a decayed ruin long before my father's election." The one-room cabin demonstrates Lincoln's humble beginnings. It measures about 13x17 feet, which is slightly smaller than the original. It includes one door and window, a stone fireplace, and dirt floor.
A few months before Lincoln was born his parents and sister moved from nearby Elizabethtown to the property, known as Sinking Spring Farm. His father paid $200 for 348 acres of stony ground on the south fork of Nolin Creek. The farm's name came from a spring on the property which emerged from a deep cave. Lincoln did not remember living on the farm because his family moved down the road to Knob Creek Farm when he was only two years old.
