Herbert Hoover National Historic Site: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Herbert Hoover National Historic Site

Regions 3, 4, & 5 Park Cultural Landscapes Program

The Herbert Hoover National Historic Site (NHS) preserves and commemorates the life of Herbert Hoover, containing his birthplace cottage, gravesite, and the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library-Museum. The majority of the 186.80-acre property is owned by the National Park Service (NPS), with small sections owned by the city of West Branch, Iowa and the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library Association. The period of significance for the NHS extends from 1874 to 1966, a ninety-two year period that begins with Hoover's birth in 1874, continues through his death and burial in 1964, and culminates in 1966 with the implementation of the gravesite design and acknowledgment of the birthplace-to-grave vista. The site is nationally significant as the birthplace of Herbert Hoover, thirty-first U.S. President from 1929 to 1932. The Isaac Miles Farm and Thompson Farm are significant for associations with the Hoover family, and they also represent trends in typical nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Iowa farmsteads. The site also reflects development in presidential memorialization in the United States, containing both a presidential library and a memorial. The site’s integrity for Hoover’s boyhood period, 1874-1885, has diminished over time, although some features of this landscape era are included in the commemorative landscape that Herbert Hoover and his family participated in creating (1935-1966). The historic site is divided into six landscape management areas of distinct character, individually important for associations to agriculture, settlement, politics, and commemoration; and collectively important for contributing to a fuller understanding of the life of Herbert Hoover. The areas are identified as the Historic Core, Gravesite, Presidential Library-Museum, Loop Drive Area, Rural/Agricultural Setting, and Visitor Center & Park Support. The birthplace cottage and gravesite are 1,600 feet apart yet visually connected. The Gravesite is the burial place of both President Hoover and his wife, Lou Henry Hoover. Buildings and structures on the site include the Visitor Center, which also houses the West Branch Post Office; a number of nineteenth-century residences (some in original locations and some relocated); a representation of a nineteenth-century blacksmith shop; a relocated and restored Quaker meetinghouse; a relocated and restored schoolhouse; the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library-Museum; picnic shelters and comfort stations; maintenance buildings; and two farmstead clusters. Much of the landscape in the proximity of buildings and structures is maintained as well-tended lawn with scattered clusters of deciduous canopy trees, flowering trees, and shrubs. A tallgrass prairie reconstruction covers the southern and western portions of the NHS, while cultivated agricultural land occurs along the west boundary. Two un-named tributaries of the west branch of Wapsinonoc Creek enter the NHS from the northwest, coming to a confluence in the prairie. The stream, known locally as “Hoover Creek,” flows east-southeast and exits the site north of the NPS maintenance structures. Most of the site drains to the creek, although small portions of the prairie and agricultural fields drain south towards Interstate 80. The current landscape reflects efforts to create a Hoover presidential memorial more strongly than it portrays the community as it appeared during Hoover's boyhood years. In its entirely, the Herbert Hoover NHS retains integrity of design, setting, feeling, and association.

Herbert Hoover National Historic Site: Cultural Landscape Inventory, Herbert Hoover National Historic Site

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