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May 2nd 2011

Published: February 7th 2012

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Roosta

Lincoln Birthplace Memorial

Located on the site of the cabin where the future president was born

Tonight I witness one of the festival’s signature competitions, and possibly the most insane sporting event in existence.

Before then, I had some time to kill.

I used it to explore the childhood of a revered American.

The Kentucky Knobs is where the limestone plateau of central Kentucky meets the Ohio River valley.

It consists of hundreds of triangle shaped hills carved by streams.

The hills are triangular instead of rounded because this area was never covered by glaciers.

In the early 1800s, this was the western frontier of the US.

Abraham Lincoln Birthplace

One of the many settlers who came into this area was one Thomas Lincoln.

He moved around a lot; he had already lived in three other states before coming to Kentucky.

He eventually bought a farm called Cave Spring for $600 in 1808, settled there, and had a son he named Abraham.

Unfortunately, the man who sold the farm to him did not have clear title, and Thomas was sued.

When Abraham was two in 1811, the family was forced to move elsewhere, and they settled in a nearby area called Knob Creek.

Cave Spring

The spring on the farm where Abraham Lincoln was born. It flows from behind the stone wall on the left into a cave

Believe it or not, this area also had a title dispute, and Thomas finally moved his family to Indiana in 1816, where land laws were cleaner.

Ultimately, young Abraham grew up, became a lawyer in Illinois, and ran for President.

Although he became rather famous, Abraham Lincoln never forgot his early life in Kentucky, and the hardships he suffered on the frontier.

Both his birthplace and his childhood home are now owned by the Park Service, and run as the Abraham Lincoln National Historic Site.

A movement to preserve the birthplace started in the early 1900s.

Kentucky citizens contributed an average of twenty seven cents each to buy and preserve the land, finally succeeding in 1906.

They also financed a marble monument over Lincoln’s actual birth site, which was designed by the same architect who did the Lincoln memorial.

President Taft dedicated it in 1923.

The first thing I saw on the site is the Cave Spring itself.

The spring area was improved by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, and shows their trademark work with local stone.

They built a proper path and

Symbolic cabin

The symbolic cabin inside the Lincoln Birthplace Memorial. For a long time, people believed this was the actual cabin where Abraham Lincoln was born.

stairway down to the spring.

The spring flows from a cave, which is now located behind a stone wall.

It flows to a small sinkhole, where it falls into another cave.

With all the rain in this area, the spring was running very high.

A note mentions that the spring is now unsafe to drink.

The closest one can get to drinking where an infant Abraham Lincoln did is the water fountain at the top of the stairs.

Near the spring lies the former site of another famous item, the boundary oak.

Oak trees live a long time, so they were used to mark property lines by settlers.

This oak tree was used to mark the boundary lines of Cave Farm, so people knew exactly where it was, and that it was alive when Abraham Lincoln was born.

After the farm became a memorial, the tree became very famous as a living link to Lincoln.

Unfortunately, the tree died in 1975, and had to be removed for safety reasons.

A slice of the tree, with its different tree rings marked with historic events, is on display

Along Knob Creek

The modern Knob Creek. A young Abraham Lincoln played in scenes like this.

in the visitor’s center.

Behind the old tree site, a nature trail climbs the back side of the hill with the memorial.

It winds through second generation forest, through a swamp, and beside a stream.

I walked the trail to get a better sense of the area.

It’s worth noting that the vegetation was very different in Lincoln’s time, since it had all been cleared for farming.

The trail was very pretty.

The trail reaches the back side of the memorial.

It looks like a miniature version of the Lincoln Memorial, minus the columns.

A long series of steps runs down the front of the hill to an American flag.

Five different presidents have given speeches from the top of these steps.

The memorial is located over Abraham Lincoln’s exact birth spot.

The location of the cabin where Lincoln was born is precisely known because it is described in surviving property documents.

A log cabin lies inside the memorial.

The log cabin has a long story, so long that someone wrote a book about it.

For

Farm plot

A recreation of a portion of the fields Abraham Lincoln tended as a boy

a long time, people believed it was the actual cabin where Lincoln was born.

It IS accurate to the era and the part of Kentucky.

Carbon dating in 2004 ultimately proved it was built about fifty years too late.

The story goes back to the World Columbian Exposition of 1896.

A millionaire from New York, Alfred Dennett, knew that Civil War veterans were going to have a reunion at the Exposition, and got the brainwave of putting Lincoln’s cabin on display as a paid exhibit.

He hired a group of local Kentucky residents to find it and ship it to him.

When they searched for the cabin it was gone.

They then grabbed the closest cabin they could find, figuring the New Yorker would not be able to tell the difference!

The same group that preserved the farm bought the cabin the same year.

These days, the park service calls it “the symbolic cabin”.

The reason the cabin was gone in 1896 is pretty straightforward.

Every log in a log cabin in that time period had to be cut by hand.

The logs in the symbolic cabin

Kentucky blue grass

Wildflower filled Kentucky blue grass, the symbol of the state

show hundreds of axe marks.

Each log took days, and farmers had more important things to do.

When they needed to build a new cabin, they first looked for one that was abandoned and took whatever usable material they could find.

Since Thomas Lincoln and his family had been driven off by a land dispute, the Lincoln’s cabin was an excellent candidate.

Knob Creek

After the birthplace, I went to where Abe Lincoln spent his childhood, Knob Creek.

The character of the land here is different to Cave Spring.

Cave Spring is located in an area of rolling hills.

Knob Creek is a narrow valley.

The site is located next to the actual Knob Creek.

Farming here was difficult.

Abe wrote in his memoirs about planting seeds in the mud next to the creek, only to watch a flood sweep them away.

He also liked to play in the creek.

One day, he was swept downstream and nearly drowned, until a friend pulled him to safety.

Astute readers probably know that there is also bourbon named ‘Knob Creek’.

It is

Wizard of Oz bed

The Wizard of Oz team in the Derby bed race parade

named for a chunk of land further down the same creek, not the place Abraham Lincoln grew up.

Knob Creek is also the site of one of young Abe Lincoln’s most significant experiences.

The farm was located on a major road to Louisville, the Bardstown and Green River Turnpike.

Slave dealers would drive their slaves along this road, shackled together.

These human chains made an indelible impression on the young boy, who grew up an ardent abolitionist (the church he attended also had a big influence).

The site today is a pretty mountain valley.

The main feature is a closed hotel.

It was built by a previous owner, Hattie Howard, in the 1930s as a tourist attraction.

Next to the hotel is an old log cabin.

This cabin was built by the Howards, but some of the logs are documented to have come from neighboring farms, which means they were in cabins that existed when Lincoln was present.

Since most new cabins were created from the remains of old ones, this cabin continues a very old tradition.

Silver Surfer bed

The Silver Surfer team in the Derby bed race. They interpreted their character rather broadly :)

Behind the cabin is a small garden.

It contains plants that were grown in the area while Abe Lincoln lived there.

The garden gives an idea of what the place must have looked like, on a much larger scale.

Next to the garden is a trail down to the creek.

No documentation exists of where Abraham played (and the creek has probably shifted since then) but it’s still easy to imagine young boys skipping on the rocks.

Behind the garden lies an open field, which I wandered through for a bit.

This field provided my first glimpse of Kentucky’s namesake feature, blue grass.

Seen from a distance in the spring, the grass’ flowers give the fields a blue sheen.

Thanks to recent rain, I got to see this effect for myself.

Parts of the field were also blue for a different reason, wildflowers.

What a pretty valley.

Kentucky Derby Bed Race

Back in Louisville, it was time for the day’s signature event, the bed race.

Yes, “bed race”.

The rules are straightforward.

Take one folding bed.

Add a queen sized

Racing insanity

A tight heat in the Derby bed races

mattress.

Add one wheel on each leg, and some method to steer them.

Add a push bar on the back.

Then decorate it, the more outlandish the better.

Four people get to push the bed around a course laid out with orange cones, while a fifth lies on the bed and steers.

Two teams race in each heat, on parallel tracks.

Fastest time wins.

This race may be the most insane competition ever invented.

The event starts with a parade.

Each year has a theme, and both the bed and the participants must be decorated to match the theme.

Most put quite a bit of effort into it, because the best of the parade gets a prize.

The theme this year was “costumed heroes.”

Some teams were really creative.

The parade winner showed up as Grue and his Minions, with elaborate paper mache costumes.

One team paraded as characters from the Wizard of Oz, and another had a Silver Surfer theme, complete with the driver in a silver bodysuit (who gets extra points for wearing the suit during the actual race).

On the other end of the spectrum,

Cone eater!

When steering goes bad, a bed turns into this. Note the cones under the bed and the ones in front about to join them.

one corporate team showed up wearing superman suits with their company logo on them; they were, believe it or not, the “champions of customer service”.

After the parade, the actual races take place.

Some teams were incredibly fast, with precise running and steering.

They were thrilling to watch if the heat was close.

Then there were the teams that were exciting for other reasons.

Steering on this tight course proved to be a challenge, and several teams crashed into the cones, the safety barrels, and even the walls.

At least two teams caught a safety barrel on their bed and dragged it halfway around the course.

The audience favorite was a team that crashed sideways into the wall, totaling half their bed.

The pushers proceeded to pick up the bed and carry it to the finish line, as the audience cheered.

The gutsiest performance has to be the pusher who tripped over some cones and fell to the track.

He was then dragged ten feet as he somehow managed to get back on his feet and keep going.

At no point did he let go

When good steering goes bad

Another bed with issues in the steering department

of the bed!

One bed had such gimpy steering they crashed into seemingly every cone on the course; at one point, the bed was dragging at least twenty of them underneath it.

This team picked up the “cone eater award” at the end of the night.

All in all, it was a riotous good time and a highlight of the entire festival.

A slice of the action:

For dinner this night, I went to the Bluegrass Brewing Company.

They are Louisville’s largest brewer.

They are famous for their Bourbon Barrel Porter, which is brewed in old whiskey barrels.

I ended up eating two of Louisville’s main culinary contributions, the Hot Brown and Derby Pie.

The Hot Brown is a sandwich consisting of turkey, melted cheese, tomatoes, and bacon bits, which is then toasted.

It will probably give one a heart attack, but it tasted really good.

Derby Pie is a variation of a Southern Pecan Pie.

I washed the meal down with some beer, of course.

Additional photos below

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