National Park: Abraham Lincoln Boyhood Home

To my knowledge, there are 5 major National Parks dedicated to Abraham Lincoln. These 5 sites are his birthplace near Hodgenville, Kentucky, his boyhood home in Lincoln City, Indiana, the adult Lincoln home in Springfield, Illinois, the assassination site at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C and the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. There are also numerous battlefields over which he played an important role, most significantly Gettysburg, PA.

In early 2011, there was a poll suggesting that Ronald Reagan was America’s greatest president. This was probably heavily biased because the poll was taken around Dutch’s birthday and the number of respondents who took the poll were probably alive when Ronald Reagan was president therefore skewing the results. Abraham Lincoln was number 2 in this poll (Clinton was 3^rd, Obama and Bush II were both ahead of Jefferson which is shocking  to me as a UVa graduate, but I digress). Over time, most polls I have seen have put Lincoln near the top.  When you take out party affiliation, and survey independents you can see that Lincoln comes out on top.

This blog isn’t going to get into historical details, but in my view, when America was just a “teenager” Lincoln was the adult that held it together through her tantrums. Because he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth shortly after the Civil War officially ended, he was not around to see the US survive, rebuild and prosper into the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. It is safe to say that Lincoln had outlined the principles for this to happen. Many have often wondered what brought Lincoln into this position of steadiness and discipline. There are hundreds of Lincoln biographies and articles, but one must start with his childhood and upbringing to help understand from whence this man came. This is why I think that most students of Lincoln should bypass the Lincoln Memorial and the Ford’s Theater for insight into the man, I suggest visiting the sites dedicated to the man’s life.

Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky and came to Washington, D.C. as a politician from Illinois. However, (as the state of Indiana claims, confirmed by the NPS), Lincoln spent much of his formative years in Southern Indiana. About an hour’s drive from Vincennes (and the George Rogers Clark National Historic Site) lies the memorial to Abraham Lincoln’s boyhood home.  The memorial is near a town called Gentryville, IN and is in the middle of nowhere. In fact, because there are not any municipalities nearby, I assume they just made its name up, Lincoln City, Indiana, for the purposes of the memorial. One can only imagine what this area would have been like without the interstate and state route nearby. It is the 21^st century and this still seems like “the frontier”.  

The park has a remarkable visitors center with extremely friendly guides. There is a 15 minute film to help get oriented to the Lincoln family tree.  Lincoln’s father, Thomas, moved to Southern Indiana because of land disputes in Kentucky. In Indiana, he was able to get a plot of land on which to farm AND because Thomas Lincoln was opposed to slavery, he preferred farming in Indiana where slavery was illegal. The area is wooded, with lots of wild animals (at the time, not now as far as I can see). This is not the original house, but a remake:

I never knew that Lincoln’s mother died of milk sickness when he was a young boy.  Milk sickness was a common ailment at the time from when cows ate snakeroot. If one consumed the milk of such a cow, it could be fatal. Her gravesite is marked with a tombstone in the park.

Thomas Lincoln remarried a widow from Kentucky brought into the family children of her own. Her name was Sarah Bush Lincoln. During his teen years, was when his thirst for knowledge was fostered by books that she had provided him and education he received in a school nearby. When Lincoln was not working on the farm, he was  reading or doing whatever he could to further his knowledge. He gained a job as a surveyor and did some work transporting goods down the river to New Orleans where he first saw slaves, this obviously made an impression on him, and impact his actions in later years.

When Lincoln was 21, his father moved the family yet again to Illinois where Abraham Lincoln would spend the next 30 years. Due to his legacy here, this plot of land became a memorial upon Lincoln’s assassination in 1865. The stones marking the actual cabin for the Lincoln family were bronzed for preservation.

There is an extremely tall (120 ft to be exact) flag pole near the visitor's center.

National Park: George Rogers Clark National Historic Site

There is an understated (and seemingly infrequently visited) National Memorial in Vincennes, IN. This town is in Southwest Indiana near the Illinois border, and the National Historic site was dedicated by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1936 to the honor of Col. George Rogers Clark. Without George Rogers Clark, the United States would probably not have claimed America's Northwestern Frontier from the British during the Revolutionary War.  This geographic area includes what is now the states of Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin. Col. Clark is best celebrated for his role in leading a rag tag and weary group of troops at a reclaimed British Fort called Sackville.

 Col. George Rogers Clark is the brother of William Clark (of Lewis and Clark fame) and had an illustrious military career in his own right, but he is most celebrated for this capture of Fort Sackville and British Lt. Governor Henry Hamilton in 1779. Capturing Fort Sackville certainly was an impressive feat, but the manner in which he (and his men) did it was remarkable. The men marched through blistering cold and some icy Midwestern floodplains to fight the British, and make them surrender the fort. This effort essentially doubled the size of the United States in the coming years.

 

The memorial is much larger than it appears at a distance, and it is positioned just along the Wabash River. The site of the monument is thought to be placed roughly in the same location as Fort Sackville. There is a 30 minute movie in the visitor's center and some artifacts like maps to look over. Inside the dome, there is a large statue of Col. Clark, and Ezra Winter painted several murals that tell the story of the frontier. You can listen to an audio describing each mural.

I came to Vincennes, IN on a cloudy Saturday in November. The town is very quaint with a cute downtown of mom and pop shops. This is also the land of Lincoln with a scenic route dedicated to one of the USA's Greatest Presidents cutting right through downtown. You can cross over into Illinois (the land of Lincoln) as pedestrian over the Lincoln Memorial Bridge which was built in the same aesthetic as the Clark Memorial.

National Park: Hawai'i Volcanoes

In October of 2010, we traveled to see my sister compete in the IronMan World Championships in Kona, HI on the Big Island of Hawaii. While the primary reason for our trip was to see my wee sister in action, we made some time at the end of our stay to visit the Volcanoes National Park. The National Park is on the southeast side of the island, and is about a 2 hour leisurely drive from Kona, HI. The park is amazing, and has piqued my renewed interest in America's National Parks, Sites, Monuments and Battlefields. 

In addition to being a national park, Volcanoes National Park is World Heritage site (1987) and is "living" proof of 70 million years of mother nature's activity. While I won't get into the science of it all (that's too complex for this blog, and I don't claim to understand it all), the volcano creates new land each day. It is thrilling to see land created as it is cooled by the water.

Lava hitting the ocean

Years and years of this activity has yielded extensive lava fields and recent vegetation. There are wonderful trails around numerous volcanic craters. On the days and evenings we visited, Kilauea Crater was exhibiting some activity with gas pouring out of the crater. The park service had shut down the roads to the north of the park as the winds were driving in that direction and the gas can be harmful if consumed (especially the kiddos). As a result, we were unable to drive around the large crater, only scope it out from observatory. In the evenings, we could clearly see a red-orange glow from the bubbling lava.

The Kilauea Crater

 The park's visitor center and observatory are well maintained, with sufficient staff for the busy"pop-in, pop-out" tourists that come, want to see some lava and then leave. The park staff keeps a fairly up to date diary of the volcano and lava activity. I learned a great deal about volcanoes while at the observatory, and there was one thing that I found completely fascinating. I always thought that active volcanoes erupted with lava coming out of the top of a mountain, but I learned that pressure can also be released underground. Underneath the volcano the lava can travel through tunnels called lava tubes. One of the most famous lava tubes is the Thurston Lava Tube. The lava tube was discovered in 1913 by Lorrin Thurston, a local newspaper publisher. You can walk through the Thurston lava tube within the park, one just has to imagine that it was created by liquid rock many years ago. 

The Thurston Lava Tube

We stayed at a wonderful lodge called the Kilauea Lodge. This quaint B&B is about as close to the park without actually being in it. Here is picture of the fam near the Volcanoes National Park visitor's center with the  Kilauea Crater in the background.

Graeme, Kate and Maisie in October of 2010

I was able to get a nice view of the lava hitting the ocean taken from the helicopter ride I took with Blue Hawaiian Helicopter tours. I got to do this since Kate got to do a massage, fair trade as far as I am concerned :-).

UPDATE March 7, 2011: I updated this post with some amazing video of lava activity in the park from CNN.