Eisenhower Birthplace, Denison

The two-story frame house in Denison, Texas, is where Dwight David Eisenhower was born on October fourteenth, eighteen ninety. His father worked cleaning steam engines for the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad, which placed the family in Denison only briefly before they moved to Abilene, Kansas, where Eisenhower grew up. For years, the exact birthplace was a matter of some dispute.

A local school principal named Jennie Jackson wrote to Eisenhower during the Second World War, and his mother confirmed that he had been born in Denison. In nineteen forty-six, the community of Denison acquired the modest house, and it was later restored as a memorial and made a state park in nineteen fifty-eight. It now operates as the Eisenhower Birthplace State Historic Site, managed by the Texas Historical Commission.

The house is simply furnished to reflect the working-class life the family would have known in the eighteen nineties. Eisenhower was the first United States president born in Texas.