Illinois may be known as the "Land of Lincoln," but Abraham Lincoln spent the formative years from the age of 7 until he turned 21 in southwestern Indiana, living with his family on a farmstead in the rolling hills of this beautiful rural area. The Lincoln family moved from Kentucky, crossing the Ohio River and settling in an area known as Little Pigeon Creek in December 1816. Now known as Lincoln City, the town is just one of several stops on a back roads tour that takes wanderers through many historic sites, representing important moments in the life of a great man. Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, is buried here, and the cabin where his cousin lived and Lincoln spent the night still stands. Those who want to retrace Lincoln's life in southern Indiana can do so easily by following the narrow roads that traverse the 20-mile area where he lived and traveled during those 14 years when he called Indiana home. The people of the region still claim Lincoln as one of their own.

Lincoln State Park provides a family friendly vacation destination steeped in Indiana history. Abraham Lincoln grew up in the Lincoln State Park area and it is where his mother died. Visitors can visit her grave, see the site where Thomas Lincoln’s cabin sat and walk the ground Lincoln walked. Potential visitors to the area can use the book A Visit to the Land of Lincoln, Indiana to plan their visit and learn some of the history of this beautiful area. indiana state parks, indiana history, indiana camping, indiana fishing, indiana hiking, lincoln for kids

In Lincoln, Land, and Labor the French scholar Olivier Fraysse traces Lincoln's problematic relationship with and ideas about the land and those who worked it, revealing Lincoln as an intelligent and ambitious man who in fact turned his back on his rural roots for a time in favor of the opportunities offered in law and politics.

In 1859 Abraham Lincoln covered his Indiana years in one paragraph and two sentences of a written autobiographical statement that included the following: "We reached our new home about the time the State came into the union. It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals in the woods. There I grew up." William E. Bartelt uses annotation and primary source material to tell the history of Lincoln's Indiana years by those who were there. The book reveals, through the words of those who knew him, Lincoln's humor, compassion, oratorical skills and thirst for knowledge, and it provides an overview of Lincoln's Indiana experiences, his family, the community where the Lincolns settled and southern Indiana from 1816 to 1830.