On site is a visitor center, featuring a 15-minute orientation film about Lincoln's time in Indiana, and museum and memorial halls.

The site is located about ten minutes off the Interstate 64 / U.S. 231 junction and near the new U.S. 231 Route, named the Abraham Lincoln Memorial Parkway in his honor.

Nearby is the site of the original Lincoln cabin; the sandstone foundation clearly outlines the boundary of the house and is visible to visitors.

It was caused by the settlers' consuming dairy products or meat of cows that ate the white snakeroot plant, which had the toxin temetrol.

Most of those in Little Pigeon Creek with milk sickness became deathly ill, including Abraham's mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln.

Nancy's maternal aunt and uncle, Elizabeth and Thomas Sparrow, with whom she had grown up, also died of the illness and were buried nearby, at what became known as Pioneer Cemetery.

Abraham shared the cabin's loft with his step brother John Johnston and his cousin Dennis Hanks for the rest of his time in Indiana.

Early on, the Lincoln family had joined the nearby Little Pigeon Creek Primitive Baptist Church, where Thomas served as a trustee and Abraham briefly as a sexton.

[7] As he grew, Abraham began taking outside jobs, often working for twenty-five cents a day clearing land, plowing fields, and building fences.

When he was not working, he spent a great deal of time at the James Gentry General Store and the two nearby grain mills in the small town, where he liked to tell stories and listen to those of older men.

During this period, he made his first trip with the businessman Allen Gentry by flatboat down to New Orleans to sell produce and bring home supplies.

The site attracted little attention as a link to Lincoln's past until 1879, during a period of increased activity in the North and the South of memorializing following the American Civil War.

The Union continued to raise funds to make improvements to the site in the 1930s and 1940s, during the Great Depression and World War II.

These workers also helped plant more than 22,000 native trees to restore that part of the county to something similar to the wilderness a young Abraham Lincoln would have seen when his family first came to Indiana.

Today, high school students continue helping maintain and improve the national park through the Youth Conservation Corps.

[12] In 1962 the Indiana legislature approved donating another 114 acres (46 ha) to the district and the Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial was created.