Richard M. Nixon Library

There are two presidential libraries in the greater Los Angeles area. In 2005 we drove up to Simi Valley and visited the Ronald Reagan Library, and today we headed up to Yorba Linda to visit the Richard M. Nixon Library. Even though it's barely a 30 minute drive away I've never been there and since they were having a model train display I figured it was a good time to visit.

Here are some photos from the trip:

They had two large display rooms with model railroad stuff. I won't bore you with lots of pictures, but this will give you an idea of the things they had running.

The had quite a bit of campaign memorabilia from Nixon's various campaigns. These buttons were from the 1960 presidential race.

These are from the 1968 presidential race. They also had displays from his House, Senate and Governor's races.

This room was kind of interesting. They have life-sized models of various world leaders who interacted with Nixon in his roles as Vice President and President. Included were Mao Tse Tung and Chou en-Lai of China, Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev of The Soviet Union, Golda Meir of Israel, Anwar Sadat of Egypt, Winston Churchill of Great Britain, Charles De Gaulle of France, Konrad Adenauer of Germany, and a Japanese Prime Minister whose name escapes me right now.

I decided to have my picture taken with the Russkies. That's Meir and Sadat in the background.

In the adjoining room are two more sculptures of Nixon greeting Chou en-Lai in China. My wife pointed to the sculpture and said "Nixon's not bowing". Good observation.

There are various gifts to the Nixons that are on display, including the original manuscript of Irving Berlin's "God Bless America".

I'm a sucker for presidential vehicles, and one of the limousines used by LBJ, Nixon, Ford and Carter is on display. I took photos of several more presidential limos during my summer visit to the Ford Museum in Michigan.

Nixon and his wife Pat are buried on the Museum grounds. In order to get around regulations concerning where legal burials can take place a small plot of land was deeded to the local Friends Church which in turn designated it as a graveyard, thus making it legal for the Nixons to be buried on the property.

Nixon's childhood home is located on the grounds. It's a very small house, built by his father, where Nixon was born in 1913.

One of the former Marine One presidential helicopters is located on the property. For some odd reason they won't let you photograph the interior, but they do let you walk through. I'm not sure if this is the exact same chopper as shown in the famous photo below of Nixon the day he resigned from the presidency in 1974.

It's an interesting place to visit, but certainly not something that's going to take more than a couple of hours to see. The Reagan Library was more interesting to me (for one thing they have Air Force One on display up there), but for someone my age who remembers the Nixon years there's a lot of memorable stuff to see.

I realized as we were wrapping up the visit that if you're under 40 years of age you probably have no personal recollection of the Nixon presidency. That's making me feel pretty old.