Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site
Eisenhower Birthplace, a Texas Historical Commission property, features the modest, two-story frame house at the corner of Lamar Avenue and Day Street in the railroad town of Denison, where Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was born in 1890. Eisenhower's father worked for the railroad and the house contains period antiques indicative of the lifestyle of a late-19th-century working family.
The site includes six acres of scenic woods and creek bottomland, intersected by an abandoned rail track turned into a walking path. The visitors center is a historic structure filled with scores of items relating to Eisenhower and his role in American and world history. A pavilion for picnicking is also on site as well as the Red Store, an educational center.
BRIEF HISTORY
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was born in the bedroom of the two-story house in Denison on Oct. 14, 1890. He was the only one of David and Ida Eisenhower's seven children born in Texas. David brought his wife and their two young sons Arthur and Edgar from Hope, Kansas in 1889 to pursue a new life in Texas working on the railroad. The Eisenhowers rented a simple frame house near the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Railroad yards where David worked as a wiper, earning about $40 a month cleaning the steam engines.
When Eisenhower was nearly 18 months old, his family returned to Kansas where his father secured employment with Belle Springs Creamery as a refrigeration engineer. It would be another 23 years before Eisenhower returned to Texas, this time as a second lieutenant in the Army infantry, stationed at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio. While in San Antonio, he met Mamie Doud, a young socialite from Denver, Colorado. After a brief courtship, they were married on July 1, 1916.
Eisenhower was always the pride of Denison. The community acquired the birthplace home in 1946 and he was hailed as a hometown hero when he came back to visit that year. He returned again on a presidential campaign trip in 1952, and Eisenhower Birthplace became a state park while he was president in 1958. He made his final visit in 1965 to dedicate the Eisenhower Auditorium at Denison High School. In 2003, the birthplace home was refurbished with 1890s-era furnishings.
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