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Hoover Park trivia
News · August 27, 2015
• The Hoover Complex did not start counting tourists until sometime during 1971, when it recorded 166,000 visitors. Attendance peaked in 1973 with 394,900. The lowest year was 2007 with 118,298. In the past 44 years, the park has drawn more than 10 million visitors, averaging about 228,700 tourists per year.
• The oldest building in the park is the West Branch Schoolhouse, built in 1853, making it 162 years old.
• The Hoover Site has a budget of about $1.3 million.
• Many of the historic homes along Downey in the Hoover Complex have picket fences for one collective reason: Farmers back then drove livestock to market down main roads like Downey, so the fences were built to keep, say, a stray hog from wandering into the family vegetable garden.
• The area stretching between the gravesite and the birthplace cottage is called “The Mall.” However, the Herbert Hoover Birthplace Foundation, the precursor to the Hoover Presidential Foundation, preferred a less formal term, “development axis.”
• A reinforced floor was installed in the birthplace cottage to handle tourist traffic. And in case of fire, the wooden structure has a sprinkler system concealed within it.
• The Birthplace Foundation wanted the Loop Road, originally installed for the funeral, removed at some point. Yet the park kept it because it is used so much.
• The Herbert Hoover Presidential Library-Museum, opened in 1962, while completely surrounded by the Hoover Park, is technically not part of the park. It owns its land and is part of the National Archives and Records Administration. Similarly, the Hoover Presidential Foundation owns the “yellow house” — that serves as its offices — the surrounding property, the Hooverball courts and acreage along Main Street.
• In 2014, the National Park Service measured the economic impact of the Hoover Complex, estimating tourists spent $7.8 million in West Branch or within 60 miles of the site.
• The site includes 186 acres, with 81 acres of prairie. The property stretches from a maintenance shed on South Second Street to the Thompson Farm near West Branch High School, and much of the land between Interstate 80 and Main Street. The section of road called Parkside Drive, which connects First Street and Baker Avenue, is also owned by the Hoover Complex
• The Herbert Hoover National Historic Site was created Aug. 12, 1965, two days after what would have been Hoover’s 91st birthday, by Public Law 89-119 (79 Stat. 510).
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