Richard M. Nixon

Nixon’s legacy landscape is consolidated, with birthplace, library, official museum, and presidential library all at one location, and all conceived while he was still alive, and active in its design.

It is located in Yorba Linda, California, a dense residential area of northeastern Orange County.

The complex was developed around his birthplace house, a small wooden clapboard built by his father in 1912 from a catalog kit.

Nixon’s parents were Quaker farmers (like Herbert Hoover’s), and owned and operated a small citrus farm here, on eight acres. He was born in the house in 1913, and lived there until his family moved to nearby Whittier nine years later.

The property changed hands after that, finally bought by the school district in 1945, which built an elementary school on the site. The birthplace house became the home for the school’s janitors, until the late 1960s.

Efforts to raise money to secure the site for a possible presidential memorial, and, later a library, began in 1969, but with Nixon's turbulent and controversial political career, these efforts waxed and waned.

It wasn’t until 1987, after the site was officially selected for Nixon’s official presidential library, that the six-acre site was purchased from the school district. The school was torn down, and the house restored.

In 1990, the $21 million library and birthplace project was completed and opened to the public. Four presidents were at the dedication: Nixon, Ford, Reagan and George H.W. Bush (Carter sent a note instead).

Developed by the Richard Nixon Archives Foundation, the library was transferred to the National Archives in 2007, though Nixon's home is still managed by the foundation.

In the fall of 2015, upon the library’s 25th anniversary, the permanent galleries closed for a year for a $25 million renovation, to replace the old exhibits with brand new installations and interactive displays about Nixon and his time in office.

Features of the site also include the president’s Sea King helicopter. He was the first president to use helicopters regularly, and he famously waved from this one on his departure from the White House, following his resignation in 1974.

After Nixon's resignation, he settled back in Orange County, in a coastal estate he had purchased in 1969, known as Casa Pacifica, inside the gated community of Cyprus Shores, in San Clemente. He lived there for several years, then in the 1980s he moved to New York, then to New Jersey. Casa Pacifica was recently on the market for $75 million.

Over the 20 years he lived after his presidency he wrote ten books, often spoke publicly, visited heads of state, and worked on his memoirs, museum, library, and legacy. He died in 1994, at his home in New Jersey, and is buried in Yorba Linda, next to his wife, a hundred feet from his birthplace house.