Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum

Richard Nixon’s presidency is one of the best documented administrations in American history. The Nixon presidential materials collection contains approximately 4,000 separate recordings of broadcast video, nearly 4,500 audio recordings, 30,000 gifts from foreign heads of states, American citizens, and others, 300,000 still photographs, 2 million feet of film, 46 million pages of documents, and 3,700 hours of recorded presidential conversations (the famous “White House tapes”). Since 1974, these materials have been maintained by the National Archives under the authority of the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservations Act (PRMPA). Congress enacted PRMPA in response to news that President Nixon, only weeks after resigning office, had concluded an arrangement with the head of the General Services Administration that would have allowed him to destroy materials in the collection. PRMPA stipulated that the documents and other materials would remain in the government’s possession, and further required that the collection stay within 50 miles of Washington, D.C. Upon the completion of a suitable addition to the library in spring 2010, the Nixon presidential materials, were moved to the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda. There, they have been unified with the pre- and post-presidential collections previously owned by the Nixon foundation as well as a collection of documents from Richard Nixon’s time as vice president that he gave to the federal government while he was in the White House and which had been stored in the National Archives facility in Laguna Niguel for more than three decades.