The Lincoln Tavern
Hattie Howell Howard, born about ten miles from here in 1886, grew up hearing local lore about Abraham Lincoln. After her brother James opened the Nancy Lincoln Inn next to Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park, Hattie looked for her own opportunity to honor the sixteenth president.
In 1928 she and her husband Chester purchased the Knob Creek Farm. The Howards hoped to preserve the land and use the site to share the story of Lincoln’s early years in Kentucky. To serve the growing number of tourists, they built the Lincoln Tavern you see here. The tavern opened for business in 1933. Visitors enjoyed food and refreshments from the tavern’s kitchen and stopped to buy gas from the pumps outside. There was also live music and dancing in the evenings. The Howards built the tavern from rough hewn logs using trees found on the property, just as frontier settlers like Thomas and Nancy Lincoln might have done.
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The Lincoln Tavern and Knob Creek site were added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1988 and became part of the National Park Service in 2001.
Marker can be reached from Bardstown Road (U.S. 31E) north of White City Road (Kentucky Route 470), on the left when traveling north.
Courtesy hmdb.org
