More Than Watergate: The Perfect Place for a Library

Today's post comes from Laurel Gray, an archives technician in the Research Rooms Branch at the National Archives in Washington, DC. It is the third of a four-part series on the archival ramifications of the Watergate scandal.

When Richard Nixon took office in 1969, he got straight to work on his Presidential Library. He established the Richard Nixon Foundation to handle the planning. The foundation fundraised, collaborated with the National Archives, and scouted locations for the project. However, amid the chaos of the 70s, straightforward planning decisions became complex and messy. Case in point: It took nearly two decades just to find a place to put the library.

Presidential Libraries are traditionally located in a place that holds significance to the President. Sometimes they're in a President's birthplace or hometown like the Eisenhower (Abilene, Kansas) or Hoover (West Branch, Iowa) libraries. Sometimes they're associated with an academic institution that a President attended like the Ford Library (Ann Arbor, Michigan). Other times they're in a city or state that held significance for a President later in life like the Reagan (Simi Valley, California) or Bush (College Station, Texas) libraries. Nixon initially opted for his hometown to be the location for his library.

Richard Nixon was born in Yorba Linda, California, and raised in nearby Whittier. He went to East Whittier Elementary, Whittier High School, and even attended Whittier College in order to stay close to home. When Nixon's private foundation started planning for the library, they only had eyes for Whittier. Luckily, the feeling was mutual.

In 1970, the City of Whittier and Whittier College made an impassioned bid to be the future location of the Nixon Presidential Library. They called upon the President's deep ties with the city and threw in some extras to sweeten the deal. The college and the city planned to donate land, money, and services in order to win the bid. The partnership between Nixon and Whittier remained solid for several years, but the deal eventually fell through in the aftermath of Watergate.

With his hometown out of the picture, discussion shifted to North Carolina. In 1981, the foundation reached out to Nixon's law school alma mater, Duke University. Unlike Whittier, not everyone at Duke jumped at the chance to be the future site of the library.

The proposed collaboration sparked fierce debates among faculty, administration, and students at the college. One side felt that the library would only be a tool for Nixon to rehabilitate his image and suppress scandal. They wanted no part in it. The other side also worried about that possibility, but they felt that Duke University could prevent that outcome.

To counteract the potential of the library becoming a tool for self-aggrandizement, the Duke administration added a stipulation to the proposal. If the library was going to be at Duke, it could only be an archival repository with no "tourist-attracting" museum. Ultimately, the Duke University Academic Council still opposed the plan, voting 35-34 against the Nixon Library proposal. Since North Carolina didn't work out, Nixon went back to California to scout locations.

During his Presidency, Nixon travelled to his home in San Clemente, California, so often that it was dubbed "the Western White House." If the coastal city was already home to one Nixon landmark, why couldn't it be home to another? San Clemente seemed willing to work with Nixon, but they entered negotiations with a similar mindset to the Duke administration. In November 1983 city officials had the foundation sign an agreement ensuring that the future library would not have "a slanted view favorable to Mr. Nixon."

With the agreement signed, San Clemente seemed to be the spot, but once again, it wouldn't last. San Clemente officials continually delayed the project due to land use issues, so the foundation cut ties with the city in 1987. With nowhere else to go, Nixon went back to where it all began.

Back in 1969, the foundation had purchased Nixon's Yorba Linda home to establish his birthplace as a National Historic Site. At the time, the project in Yorba Linda was separate from the Presidential Library project. However, circumstances changed over the next two decades. After rejections from his hometown, alma mater, and coastal casa, Nixon's birthplace began to look like the perfect place for a library. Luckily, this decision stuck, and in 1990 the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace officially opened in Yorba Linda, California.

Read the first and second blogs in this series. And stay tuned for the fourth and final post of this series, which explores how the Nixon Library became part of the National Archives.

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