
The story of Nancy Hanks, Abraham Lincoln's mother, has long fascinated Americans. In the early twentieth century, historians suggested that she had been born in 1783 to Lucy Hanks, the unmarried daughter of pioneers living on the east slope of Saddle Mountain in presentday Mineral County. In 1933 the Nancy Hanks Association built this log cabin to mark her putative birthplace. As it turns out, a number of other places (fifty-seven, according to the 1941 WPA guide), were also claimants. The guide also noted that there was “not one shred of evidence that Nancy Hanks ever lived within several hundred miles of [the] spot.” When the cabin was built, its setting was pristine, and it easily suggested the sense of place that may well have persisted at the birth site, wherever it was. Unfortunately, vacation houses are now encroaching on the property. With its V-notched square logs, wood-shake roof, front porch supported by rounded log posts, and single fieldstone chimney, the cabin is at least a convincing replica of a pioneer log cabin.