Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial

Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial preserves the site where Abraham Lincoln spent his childhood in southern Indiana. It is managed as a National Park Service site and marks the location of Lincoln’s frontier home and family cemetery.

The site includes a Memorial Building with exhibits about Lincoln’s boyhood, a reconstructed one-room cabin and farm demonstrations, and trails through the original woods and fields. Programs and living-history demonstrations illustrate early 19th-century frontier life and local crafts.

Abraham Lincoln’s family moved to this area in 1816 and lived here until 1830. The property later became the focus of preservation efforts to protect the cabin site, family burial ground, and surrounding landscape associated with Lincoln’s youth.

The memorial sits near the small community of Lincoln City in Spencer County, southern Indiana, on land that was once timbered hills and prairie. The site is set in a largely rural landscape with wooded areas and farm fields surrounding the preserved grounds.

• Dates of Lincoln residency: The Lincoln family lived on this property from 1816 to 1830, when Abraham Lincoln was a boy.

What to See #

• Memorial Building: Contains an interpretive Memorial Building with exhibits about Abraham Lincoln's early life and the surrounding landscape.
• Lincoln Living Historical Farm: A recreated early 19th-century farm where costumed interpreters demonstrate frontier crafts and daily life typical of the 1820s.
• Family Cemetery: Small family burial ground that includes the grave of Lincoln's mother and other family members from the period the Lincolns lived on the site.