Celebrate Herbert Hoover's 150th birthday with Hoover's Hometown Days
Just off Interstate 80 at exit 254 in West Branch lies a treasure trove of history featuring a national park, 16 buildings listed on the National Register of Historic Places and Iowa's only presidential museum and library.
One-hundred-fifty years ago on Aug. 10, Herbert Hoover, the 31st president of the United States and the only president ever to come from Iowa, was born there. This year, the West Branch community is pulling out all the stops with a grander-than-usual edition of the annual Hoover's Hometown Days festival to celebrate his sesquicentennial birthday.
West Branch has held special birthday celebrations to honor the president and his wife, Lou, of Waterloo, dating as far back as 1948, when Hoover and his family returned to town to celebrate his 74th birthday. He died in 1964, one of just five presidents to survive to age 90 or older.
More: Historic front page from the Des Moines Register, Nov. 7, 1928: Hoover elected president
"What's cool about Hoover's Hometown Days is that there is truly something for everybody; it aims to be a festival that does appeal to entertain a large demographic of people fully," said Jessi Simon, executive director at Main Street West Branch, the volunteer organization that hosts the event. "There are unique opportunities across the board to do something entertaining and unique and enjoy the community of West Branch, to have some summer fun and learn about Hoover's life and legacy at the same time."
Exciting new and classic events
This year, the main day of the festival will fall on Hoover's actual birthday, a Saturday, and new celebrations have been added to the lineup.
Crowd favorites like a parade, Hoover Ball tournaments and workshops, food trucks, historic reenactments and live music will return. The parade starts at 10 a.m. and will proceed down Main Street in the downtown corridor.
New to the festival this year is Hoover's Hootenanny, a picnic with live music on the lawn of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, inspired by Hoover's Quaker heritage.
Educational experiences and unique highlights
The event features a wide variety of family fun and educational experiences, like free admission to the museum and library, which features the temporary exhibit "Hoover 150: A Birthday Celebration." It's the final one there prior to a planned remodeling and renovation.
"This is an opportunity to discover the Hoovers in a remarkable way," Thomas Schwartz, director of the library and museum, said in a news release. "This exhibit properly provides a special sendoff to our galleries, sharing the Hoover story in a festive way. With a monumental renovation only months away, we encourage visitors to rediscover the museum one more time before our doors close until 2026."
Other educational highlights of this year's Hoover's Hometown Days include the Honoring Hoover Family Discussion, where Margaret Hoover, Leslie Hoover-Lauble, and Allan Hoover III, great grandchildren of the Hoovers, will discuss the lives and legacies of their ancestors and what it means to them to carry on the Hoover name. Another panel called the Hoover Forum welcomes historians discussing Hoover's legacy and a ranger from Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, where Hoover, a conservationist, maintained Camp Rapidan. His trout fishing getaway, it was presented as a gift to the American people after he left the White House.
"It only happens once every 150 years," said Aaron Scheinblum, the museum and library's public affairs specialist. "We have the opportunity to honor Hoover's hometown and Herbert Hoover's birthday every year, but to do it on a special anniversary like this is a tremendous opportunity for us to just do something a little bit different, go all out for it, and really turn it into a birthday celebration that people will remember for a long time."
The presidential library and museum and Mainstreet West Branch also teamed up with Big Grove, the Iowa City-area-based craft brewery, to create a special beer for the event. Simply named Thirty One, it is a classic wheat ale featuring flavor notes of honey and a hint of citrus.
To cap off the festivities, at 7 p.m. on the Hoover Stage at the park there will be a free birthday cake for attendees, followed by a live performance by Shades of Blue Jazz Ensemble, a group that is part of the U.S. Air Force Band.
Both Simon and Scheinblum emphasize the festival also is bout celebrating the historic town of West Branch, which most only pass through when going somewhere else.
"It is worth a day trip to visit historic West Branch. You won't be sorry. There is something for everybody every time you visit West Branch, but especially during Hoover's Hometown Day(s)," said Simon. "What we try to capture when you visit West Branch is this notion that you can be a small-town Iowa kid and grow up to leave a truly positive impact on the world."
Hoover's Hometown Days kick off at 4 p.m. Aug. 9, with a youth Hoover-ball tournament followed by tractor pulls, food and beer vendors and a performance by the Mill Creek Band. The festivities continue from 8 a.m. to 8:50 p.m. the following day, with the full lineup of events available online at hooverdays.org.
Jessica Rish is an entertainment, dining and business reporter for the Iowa City Press-Citizen. She can be reached at [email protected] or on X, formerly known as Twitter, @rishjessica_
This article originally appeared on Iowa City Press-Citizen: West Branch honors Herbert Hoover's 150th birthday with grand festival
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