Lincoln Day 2023 at Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial

Superintendent Rhonda Schier and other rangers fold the flag at the 99th Lincoln Day. NPS SCA/Bielawa.

The 99th Lincoln Day

On February 12, 2023 — Abraham Lincoln's 214th birthday — Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial in Indiana held its 99th annual Lincoln Day, the first in-person gathering in three years; the year before, an ice storm had forced a virtual event in place of the annual pilgrimage to the Pioneer Cemetery.

The day honors the history and legacy of Lincoln — the 16th president — and his ties to this place, where he lived from age 7 to 21 and developed the qualities for which he is revered around the world. It is a team effort of Park Service staff, partners, volunteers, historians, authors, musicians, a eulogist, re-enactors, DAR chapters, community groups, neighbors and descendants of the Little Pigeon Creek Community, combining education, ceremony and song.

Remembering the park's own history

Lincoln Day also honors those who worked from the grass roots to protect the pioneer cemetery and the surrounding forest and farmland; those who designed the Allee, its trails and the flagpole terrace along the pilgrimage route; and those who founded the Lincoln Living Historical Farm, just over fifty years earlier, to show how the Lincoln family lived in Indiana from 1816 to 1830. The day's program carried photographs of the 1941 cornerstone ceremony for the Memorial Visitor Center.

Care, access and a new forest

• The memorial building: a re-roofing project was nearing completion; exterior and interior walls had been repointed, the terrace repaired, and the sculpted panels cleaned and restored.
• Access for all: under a new Accessibility Plan, the visitor center restrooms were redesigned; the Allee trails got a new surface recommended by neighbors and visitors who use mobility devices; and sloped spur trails now offer an alternative to the historic stairs up to the flagpole knoll — universal design, making parks for everyone.
• A pioneer forest: thousands of "baby oaks", protected from browsing deer, were planted to recreate an oak–hickory forest like the one of Lincoln's time; volunteers and youth teams rebuilt split-rail fences and cleared downed trees.
• Learning: education programs grew from school visits to digital and distance learning reaching thousands of students nationwide, plus teacher workshops for project-based lessons using the park as an outdoor classroom.

In the superintendent's words, all of this shows that for the "Community of Lincoln," history is not past tense.

Looking ahead to 2024

The park looked forward to the 100th Lincoln Day in 2024, and to the solar eclipse of April 8, 2024, when Lincoln Boyhood would lie in the path of totality for 2 and a half minutes — an event that would have fascinated Lincoln, a stargazer who once visited an observatory in Washington to look at the stars and moon.

Sources

Based on Rhonda B. Schier, "Lincoln Day 2023," superintendent's welcome, National Park Service, Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial; a work of the United States government in the public domain.