The Herbert Hoover National Historic Site is in a beautifully laid-out park adjacent to Wapsinonoc Creek, on the south side of the small community of West Branch. The park was dedicated in 1965, and in addition to the Hoover grave site (designed by Richard J. Wagner) it contains the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, a visitors' center, and several historic buildings relating to the Hoover family. When one thinks in terms of the more recent presidential libraries, the building devoted to Hoover clearly represents a far different era.
Several concepts are expressed within the historic site. There is a play between the surrounding rural, small-town character and the perfection of an English garden expressed within the site; there is a suggested link between the “Colonial” architectural image of the 1857 Friends Meetinghouse and the Colonial Revival references in the Presidential Library and Museum building.