Walk Slowly and Bow Often: Ike & Mamie's Retirement

Eisenhower National Historic Site was the home and farm of General and President of the United States Dwight D. Eisenhower and Mamie Doud Eisenhower located on the border of Gettysburg National Park.

Eisenhower National Historic Site comprises 690 acres and includes four farms, three of which were used by President Eisenhower for his show herd of black Angus cattle. Today the farm is maintained as it was during the Eisenhower years and the President's home retains nearly all its original furnishings. I

Here is where the helicopter landed coming to and from the White House.

Dwight David Eisenhower was born in Dennison, TX, 1890, third of six sons. He grew up in Abilene, Kansas and entered West Point in 1911. Ike is his nickname from grade school.

The Ranger gives a talk on the historic house in the living room.

When the US entered WWI in 1917, Ike was assigned duty in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in charge of training soldiers for the army's tank corp. He loved this town in the Appalachian foothills, about 50 miles south of where his ancestors had settled in the 1700s.

Anticipating retirement, Ike and Mamie bought this property in 1950 and began to fix it up.

As JFK's inauguration drew to a close on January 20, 1961, the departing President and Mamie headed north on snow-covered roads. "And so we came to Gettysburg," wrote General Eisenhower in the mid-1960s, "and to the farm we had bought eleven years earlier, where we expected to spend the remainder of our lives."

Mamie's portrait from the fifties hangs in the living room.