• Pink flowers blossom in the garden of a white two-room cottage.

    Herbert Hoover

    National Historic Site Iowa

A Memorial and a Legacy

The influence of Herbert Hoover, Lou Henry Hoover, and their family shaped the development of the presidential memorial area in order for the public to gain a fuller understanding of Hoover’s life.
 
A one-story frame building is rennovated as workers pause in the doorway for a photograph.

The restoration of the Birthplace Cottage was the first step in the creation of a park to commemorate the life of Herbert Hoover.

Herbert Hoover NHS Collection

The park's memorial landscape and its elements symbolize American ideals of religion, education, hard work, community, and entrepreneurship as Herbert Hoover saw them and lived them. The landscape and historic furnishings are a deliberate effort to commemorate and celebrate Herbert Hoover’s accomplishments and ideals, rather than an attempt to fully recreate the setting of his youth. They reflect the wishes and direct involvement of the Hoover family, and especially Lou Henry Hoover, as they expressed them during the site’s development from 1935 to 1966. As additions to the historic landscape, the Gravesite, the Statue of Isis, and the Presidential Library and Museum connect Herbert Hoover’s early childhood to his later accomplishments.

Did You Know?

Yellow coneflowers in the lush green prairie grass.

General Land Office surveyors who first came to Iowa commented that the territory was fit only for waterfowl. Eighty-five percent of Iowa used to be soggy tallgrass prairie. More...