TEXAS: LYNDON B. JOHNSON RANCH

 Tuesday, March 23, 2021

We began the next day with a three-hour drive to the LBJ Ranch in Stonewall, which is due west of Austin.

I am always on the look-out for good murals, and I made Bob stop for this one in Eden. Is that Eve? (Note: We actually did pass the Garden of Eden, but unfortunately it was not on Bob's agenda.)

We visited the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library in Austin in 2012 (although for some reason I never got around to writing about it here). On this trip, nine years later, we decided to visit the ranch where LBJ was born, lived a good part of his life, and was buried.

The LBJ Ranch is in Stonewall (yes, named after Confederate General Stonewall Jackson who died as a result of friendly fire in 1863). After paying our fees at the Visitors Center, we walked out to a living history farm based on a 1918 German farm. (Apparently there were lots of German settlers in this area. In fact, 15 miles away is a town named Fredericksburg that is full of German shops.) The farm was one of the better living history places we have visited. The volunteers work the farm and literally eat the fruits of their own labors.

We walked through quite a nice home . . .  

. . . that supposedly belonged to this friendly couple:

I wish I knew the story of this beautiful framed wreath hanging on the wall.

HYDE PARK. NEW YORK: ROOSEVELT'S HOME

About 90 miles due north of New York City, just north of Poughkeepsie and on the Hudson River, lies Hyde Park, the hometown of the 32nd President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

With about 22,000 residents, Hyde Park is relatively small compared to some of its famous neighbors, but it's a pretty upscale place, a fitting hometown for one of America's royal families--the Roosevelts.

And there they are, Eleanor and Franklin, waiting to entertain any visitors in their outdoor reception area:

The statue was adapted from a picture taken of the couple in 1933 right here in Hyde Park.

WEST BRANCH, IOWA: HERBERT HOOVER PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM, THE HOOVER BIRTHPLACE, AND WHERE TO EAT

Our next destination was the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum (the second PLM of our trip) in West Branch, just 12 miles east of Iowa City.

I have to admit that I've always viewed Hoover as somewhat of a place-holder in history. He got stuck with the Great Depression, not really his fault, and he mostly just had to be the figurehead in the White House until someone else could replace him.

I got a completely different view of him from visiting his PLM.

Hoover was the first President born west of the Mississippi. He was born in 1874, and the first census in West Branch wasn't until 1880, when the city had a booming population of 500.

Hoover's father died in 1880 and his mother in 1884, leaving him an orphan at age nine. He eventually went to live with an uncle in Oregon. After initially failing his college entrance exams, he was accepted into the inaugural class of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, from which he graduated in 1895 with a degree in geology and a girlfriend named Lou Henry, a banker's daughter and fellow Iowan.

Herbert on the bottom left