Newberg: Hoover-Minthorn House Museum

Oregon has one presidential home, the Hover-Minthorn House in Newberg.

It is also the first presidential home dedicated during the president's lifetime, and the dedication was attended by Herbert Hoover himself.

Although born in Iowa, Hoover moved to Oregon to live with his uncle, Doctor John Minthon, at the age of eleven. He lived there until leaving for Stanford six years later.

Perhaps that is not as long as some residencies, but it was a fairly long residence for him, as his engineering career had him moving around a lot.

Those connections eventually led to him working on food relief during and after WWI.

His success here and progressiveness made him fairly popular, leading to his election as the 31st president of the United States in 1928.

Then, with the start of the Great Depression shortly thereafter, his popularity ended pretty quickly.

There are some reasons why that is fair, and others why it is less fair, but that's pretty normal.

The tour allows you to learn about a lot more besides Hoovervilles, though it might be somewhat overly slanted in his favor.

He did maintain friends in the area, leading to the purchase of the house and the creation of the museum.

The ownership was not uninterrupted, and the house did serve as a boarding house for a while, but it is still well-preserved.

There are more artifacts of the Minthorn family, but some personal effects of Hoover himself, including his fishing tackle.

It was an interesting tour, and an interesting part of local history.

COVID: The tour is mainly indoors, and while it is not exactly crowded, there was another couple on our tour, and new people coming in as we were leaving. I remained masked.

Accessibility: Although there is a handicapped parking spot in front of the house, there are steps to get in and stairs to the second story with no ramps or elevators in sight. While that is historically accurate, I do not see any attempts at accommodating it. 

https://www.hooverminthorn.org/