Abraham Lincoln Birthplace Historic Resource Study

LINCOLN AND TWENTIETH CENTURY POPULAR CULTURE: AUTOMOBILE TOURISM

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, visitation to the birthplace and other Lincoln historical sites escalated in direct proportion to improved roads and better automobiles. The War Department sharply felt the effects of increased park visitation. In 1927, over 20,000 visitors annually entered the park. Each year, over 8,000 cars drove onto the property, often bypassing the inadequate park entrance roads and driving over fields. Visitors routinely parked their autos on the court below the flagpole and picnicking visitors left behind their debris. Improvements to accommodate motoring park visitors were expedited, by the late 1920s, before the landscape deteriorated completely. [75]

War Department and NPS administrators also worried about exterior commercial encroachment, generated by auto tourism, and its effect on the park's historic scene. In particular, the Nancy Lincoln Inn, described as a restaurant, souvenir shop, and dance hall, lay just outside the park boundary, south of the Memorial Building, and posed a threat to the historic site's dignity. [76]

Lincoln historic sites dotted the Kentucky countryside and extended beyond the state borders to other Lincoln homesteads in Indiana and Illinois. At least two Kentucky sites, the Nancy Lincoln Inn and the Knob Creek Farm, catered to automobile tourists during the 1920s and the 1930s. [77] Both of these sites and the Lincoln birthplace benefited from federal aid to states for highway construction passed through the Federal Aid Road Act of 1916 and the Federal Highway Act of 1921. During the 1920s, the Kentucky Highway Department constructed U. S. 31 E, along older routes, which provided access to all three LaRue County Lincoln historic sites. In addition, the Lincoln Memorial Highway Association began construction of the Lincoln Trail, a memorial highway passing through Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois. The trail follows the route the Lincolns traveled in these states and was originally marked by road signs and historic structures. [78]

Figure 24: Aerial photograph postcard of the Lincoln Memorial (circa 1936)

The Nancy Lincoln Inn, constructed in 1928, consists of a large, round-log building that houses a souvenir shop, snack bar, and Lincoln memorabilia. The inn operated four, one-room overnight tourist cabins that are currently unoccupied. Jim Howell constructed and operated this concession, located just south of the Memorial Building and plaza, from 1928 to 1946. Family members continue to operate the inn.

The Knob Creek Farm, Lincoln's home from 1811 to 1817, is another roadside tourist attraction along U.S. 31E. In 1931, Hattie and Chester Howard purchased 308 acres along Knob Creek recognized by Lincoln as his childhood home. The Howards erected a large, round-log building and operated a tavern and restaurant there. In addition, the Howards moved a traditional log cabin, built by the Gollaher family circa 1800, closer to U.S. 31E from another location on the farm and opened it to tourists. [79] Both the Nancy Lincoln Inn and the Lincoln Boyhood Home at Knob Creek Farm still operate as tourist attractions.

Two other parks, the Pioneer Memorial State Park and the Lincoln Homestead State Park, commemorate Lincoln's parents and grandparents. Pioneer Memorial State Park, dedicated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1934, consisted of an abandoned graveyard and quarry site in 1923. The park is located in Harrodsburg, Kentucky, due east of Bardstown. A Works Projects Administration Federal Writers' Project guidebook to Kentucky describes the Lincoln Marriage Temple, one of many attractions at this historic park. The temple is a red brick building, cruciform in plan, with a central pulpit. The Lincoln Marriage Cabin now stands in place of the pulpit. Reportedly, the cabin was moved from its original site in the Beech Fork Settlement where Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln married. It resembles the Lincoln birthplace cabin. [80]

Lincoln Homestead State Park, located in Springfield, Kentucky, southeast of Bardstown, contains the purported childhood home of Nancy Hanks Lincoln, a two-story, hewn-log house. In the same park, the Bathsheba (Bersheba) Lincoln Cabin, a reproduction of Lincoln's grandmother's home, is exhibited. The WPA guide recommended the historical reenactments of the Lincoln marriage ceremony held yearly on June 12. [81]

All of the Lincoln sites in Kentucky clearly profited from the expansion of highways in the state and their often tentative historic connections to Lincoln. Other sites and institutions in the state have liberally adopted the name Lincoln, regardless of any historic link to the Lincoln family, because the name carries specific connotations for Americans. Whether the intent is commemorative or economic, the name and memory of Lincoln is evocative.

Figure 25: The Mission 66 Visitor Center, 1959