The Herbert Hoover National Historic Site buildings and grounds in West Branch, Iowa, are preserved by the National Park Service to commemorate the life of the 31st President of the United States. The site is also known as Herbert Hoover Birthplace. It includes the small cottage where Herbert Hoover was born in 1874, a blacksmith shop similar to the one owned by his father, the first West Branch schoolhouse, and the Quaker meetinghouse where the Hoover family worshipped. Also located on the grounds are the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, the gravesites of Hoover and his wife, First Lady Lou Henry Hoover, and an 81-acre (33 ha) tallgrass prairie.
As Herbert Hoover Birthplace, the site was declared a National Historic Landmark on June 23, 1965.
The National Historic Site was established on August 12, 1965.
Famous quotes containing the words herbert hoover, hoover, national, historic and/or site:
“The swimming hole is still in use. It has the same mudbank. It is still impossible to dress without carrying mud home in one’s inner garments. As an engineer I could devise improvements for that swimming hole. But I doubt if the decrease in mother’s grief at the homecoming of muddy boys would compensate the inherent joys of getting muddy.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)
“Our fathers and grandfathers who poured over the Midwest were self-reliant, rugged, God-fearing people of indomitable courage.... They asked only for freedom of opportunity and equal chance. In these conceptions lies the real basis of American democracy. They and their fathers give a genius to American institutions that distinguished our people from any other in the world.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)
“...America has enjoyed the doubtful blessing of a single-track mind. We are able to accommodate, at a time, only one national hero; and we demand that that hero shall be uniform and invincible. As a literate people we are preoccupied, neither with the race nor the individual, but with the type. Yesterday, we romanticized the “tough guy;” today, we are romanticizing the underprivileged, tough or tender; tomorrow, we shall begin to romanticize the pure primitive.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1873–1945)
“The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, may be summarized as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces—in nature, in society, in man himself.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)
“The site of the true bottomless financial pit is the toy store. It’s amazing how much a few pieces of plastic and paper will sell for if the purchasers are parents or grandparent, especially when the manufacturers claim their product improves a child’s intellectual or physical development.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)