About this place

Learn about the story of President Nixon's life and career at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, the twelfth Library to join the Federal government's system of Presidential Libraries. While the Museum is located in Yorba Linda, California, the collections of the Nixon Library are located in two facilities - one in Yorba Linda, California, and the other in College Park, Maryland. Despite the separation, the two facilities are a single institution sharing one director. Under the authority of the 1974 Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act, the Nixon Library (a part of the National Archives and Records Administration) maintains the records of the Nixon administration, including secretly recorded conversations between President Nixon and his advisers, official files, audiovisual materials, and other collections of documents and materials that have been donated. Located on the citrus ranch that President Nixon's father owned nearly a century ago, the Nixon Library and Museum in Yorba Linda features artifacts ranging from a Moon rock (retrieved by an Apollo lunar mission during the Nixon administration) to the house where President Nixon was born. Other exhibits showcase glittering head of state gifts, elegant gowns, and the president's limousine and helicopter. The Nixon Library in Yorba Linda also periodically hosts speakers and authors to discuss their works, American history, and the presidency, among many other topics. While the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda principally holds papers from the pre-presidential period, including the vice-presidential era, and from the post-presidency, the College Park, Md., office holds the bulk of the presidential papers, including the recordings of presidential conversations (the "White House tapes") and other audiovisual materials. The College Park office of the Nixon Library has no exhibit galleries or museum space.