2009-D Birthplace/Frontier, Zinc

The 2009-D Birthplace/Frontier cent in standard zinc composition was the Denver Mint's contribution to the first design in the bicentennial program. Denver struck approximately 350.4 million cents across all four bicentennial designs, slightly more than Philadelphia's output. The reverse depicts the log cabin where Lincoln was born near Hodgenville in Hardin County (now LaRue County), Kentucky. Richard Masters designed the scene, with sculpting by Jim Licaretz.

The Birthplace/Frontier design captures the environment of Lincoln's earliest years. His father, Thomas Lincoln, was a carpenter and farmer who had purchased the Sinking Spring Farm, named for a limestone spring on the property. The family lived there only briefly before a title dispute forced them to move to Knob Creek, about ten miles away. Lincoln later recalled that his earliest memory was of the Knob Creek home, not the birthplace cabin. The 2009 bicentennial program was historically significant for the Lincoln cent series. For fifty years, the coin had carried Frank Gasparro's Lincoln Memorial reverse, introduced in 1959 for Lincoln's 150th birthday. Replacing that familiar design with four new reverses was an ambitious step, and the Mint released the designs in chronological order throughout the year to tell Lincoln's story in sequence.