Three years of venue renovations are amplifying the profile of Lincoln City, Indiana, injecting new energy in an area of the Hoosier State devoted to the 16th U.S. president.
Additions to the 38-year-old Lincoln Amphitheatre have boosted the open-air venue’s capacity from 1,500 to 2,200. Lincoln City is almost equidistant from Evansville and Louisville, Kentucky, and Director Marc Steczyk notes the amphitheater offers a fresh-air concert experience different from venues in both cities. Musical offerings run the gamut, and tickets remain for shows this year from country singer Gabby Barrett, former Guns N’ Roses drummer Steven Adler, and blues rocker Kenny Wayne Shepherd, as well as acts honoring The Eagles and Bob Dylan.
The amphitheater’s calendar includes an Abraham Lincoln-themed concert series — “we will definitely always include that,” Steczyk says — and it joins neighboring attractions in honoring Lincoln’s Hoosier legacy. Indeed, the Spencer County community of Lincoln City is all about the future president’s formative years. He lived in this thick forest from age 7, when his family arrived from Kentucky, through age 21, when he left for Illinois and launched his legendary career in law and politics.
At Lincoln State Park, visitors can hike, boat, and fish, and relax at a campground. Steps away from Lincoln Amphitheatre, visitors can retrace young Abe’s path on Mr. Lincoln’s Neighborhood Walk trail. It encompasses the Little Pigeon Primitive Baptist Church’s cemetery where his sister, Sarah, is laid to rest, as well as the sites of the first school he attended and Gorden Mill where he worked, grinding corn and surviving a kick to the forehead by his horse.
Continue your exploration at the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial, the resting place of the future president’s mother, Nancy Hanks, who died of milk sickness at age 34, when Lincoln was 9.
The semi-circular Memorial Visitor Center (also free to enter) dates to 1943 and features a film, memorial halls, and artifacts. About 130,000 people visit annually. Lining its exterior are five sculpture panels depicting stages of Lincoln’s life. Hike a little more than a mile across the Thomas Lincoln Farm, named for the president’s father — whose handcrafted bowfront bureau built for neighbors was featured in Evansville Living in 2024 — and check out a primitive cabin and pioneer setting from the early 1800s, brought to life by reenactors. Peek inside the ramshackle cabin and marvel at how the Lincolns likely lived – three sisters in one bed, parents in another bed, and Abraham and his two brothers upstairs. Erin Hilligoss-Volkmann, the memorial’s director of education and resource management, says the reproduction “is based on Lincoln’s own writings.”
Like Lincoln City’s other attractions, the memorial honors Lincoln’s 14 formative years in Southern Indiana and invites visitors to “walk the same ground where Lincoln worked, played, learned, and grew,” Hilligoss-Volkmann says.
WHAT MAKES A NATIONAL MONUMENT?
Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial was established in 1962 by President John F. Kennedy. According to the National Parks Conservation Association, national monuments are significant lands and waters that can be set aside for permanent protection. While Congress can create any kind of national park site by passing legislation, presidents can create national monuments using authority granted to them by Congress in the Antiquities Act of 1906.
