Gerald R. Ford Birthsite and Gardens

Birthsite Of President Gerald R. Ford (The House Is Gone); Memorial Garden · Omaha, Nebraska

The Gerald R. Ford Birthsite and Gardens is a small memorial park in a residential neighbourhood of midtown Omaha, on the lot where the 38th President of the United States was born in 1913. He was born Leslie Lynch King Jr. in a large house belonging to his father's family; his parents' marriage broke up within weeks, and his mother took him away from Omaha as a baby, so Ford grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and took his stepfather's name. The house itself is gone - destroyed by fire in the early 1970s, by most accounts - and the lot became a memorial garden a few years later. Today there is a formal rose garden, a colonnade or outline suggesting the old house, a small garden in memory of Betty Ford and display kiosks with photographs and text about Ford's life. It is free and usually open in daylight. It is the only presidential birthsite in Nebraska, but it is a 15- to 20-minute stop for presidential history fans, not a place to plan a day around; the Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids is the real Ford destination.

3202 Woolworth Avenue, Omaha, Nebraska, 68105, United States

NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED. The typical pattern: the gardens are open daily from roughly dawn to dusk, year-round, with no staff and no fee, and they may close briefly for maintenance, storm damage or special events. There is no visitor centre with separate hours. The traps are expecting an indoor museum or a surviving house, arriving after dark when the panels are hard to read, coming in winter when the rose garden is bare and needing a toilet on a site that probably has none. Confirm current times before relying on them.

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