Doug Wieland
HOUGH it has been sixteen years since President Richard Milhous Nixon’s death and more than thirty-five years since he
left the political stage, opinion as to his place in history remains sharply polarized. To some Americans, Nixon is still the president who spoke so eloquently to the “silent majority,” while to others he is the angry politician whose outbursts against reporters were legendary. Noteworthy in history as the American president who established diplomatic relations with China, he is also known as the figure who ignited a firestorm of dissent and turmoil on the nation’s college campuses and who ultimately resigned the presidency—the only president to do so.
Because the past three and one-half decades since Nixon’s resignation are only a blink of the eye when measured against the timeline of historical perspective, it will be some years yet before consensus emerges as to his legacy. For now, those interested in exploring Nixon’s life and discovering what he meant to Americans in his day will find no more illuminating place to begin than the Nixon Presi- dential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California.
The library and Nixon’s childhood home sit on nine acres nestled among tidy suburban homes in the northeast- ern corner of Orange County, about
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u Movie and interactive theaters and twenty- two high-tech galleries are housed in the 52,000-square-foot museum section of the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California.
thirty miles from downtown Los Angeles. From its dedication in 1990 until 2007, the library complex was managed by the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace Foundation, but in July 2007, its administration was merged into the National Ar- chives and Records Administration system, which operates twelve other presidential libraries.
The Nixon library’s outward appearance is, at first, a little under- whelming: it is a stolid, slightly squat edifice with a vaguely neoclassical feel. Somehow, in the back of a visitor’s mind, there is a nagging feeling of “Is this all there is?” But there is more to the Nixon library than initially meets the eye. Upon entering the building, the visitor crosses a bright and airy foyer, pays admission, and steps into a reception
PHOTO: TIME & LIFE PICTURES/GETTY IMAGES
area, which sits between the library’s two large wings. The wing on the far side of the reception area is the north wing, which contains the museum proper. The wing on the near side is the south wing, which contains the foyer as well as a reproduction of the
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PHOTO: THE RICHARD NIXON FOUNDATION
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