NPS PHOTO

Wooden benches and an iron stove provide simple furnishings for the restored Friends Meetinghouse.

Herbert Hoover, Lou Henry Hoover, and their family shaped this presidential memorial area to present a fuller understanding of Hoover's life.

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. Rather than fully recreate the setting of his youth, the landscape and historic furnishings are an effort to commemorate and celebrate Herbert Hoover’s accomplishments and ideals. They reflect the wishes and the direct involvement of the Hoover family, and especially Lou Henry Hoover, as they expressed them during the park’s development from 1935 to 1966.

As additions to the historic landscape of Herbert's early years, the Gravesite, the Statue of Isis, and the Presidential Library and Museum connect his childhood to his later accomplishments.