Dwight David Eisenhower

The Hope store had a second name on it. On March 30, 1885, David Eisenhower and his business partner Milton Good opened Good & Eisenhower, a general store run mostly by the Eisenhower family and, by David's rule, balanced to the penny. The partners were boosters, and in early 1886 they raised money among businesses for an opera house. Good left town in late 1888 and the family carried on the store. The Eisenhowers later blamed Good's misdeeds for its failure and said he left in something of a hurry; historians' research has since improved his reputation.

What the plaque says

Dwight David Eisenhower The 34th president of the United States, Dwight David Eisenhower, grew up in Dickinson County. His parents, David and Ida Eisenhower, moved to Hope, about 10 miles west of here, in 1885. There, the Eisenhowers opened a general merchandise store and the future president's two older brothers were born. "When I was a small boy in Kansas, a friend of mine and I went fishing and as we sat there in the warmth of the summer afternoon on a riverbank, we talked about what we wanted to do when we grew up. I told him that I wanted to be a real major league baseball player...and he said that he'd like to be president of the United States. Neither of us got our wish." —Dwight D. Eisenhower After moving briefly to Denton, Texas, where Eisenhower was born on October 14, 1890, the family returned to Dickinson County, this time to Abilene, about 25 miles northwest of here. Eisenhower left for West Point in 1911, served as Supreme Commander of Allied Forces during World War II, and was elected president in 1952, but he always cherished his Kansas heritage—"the proudest thing I can claim is that I am from Abilene."

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Chaplain Kapaun Museum and St. John Nepomucene Church — 13 mi
  The old rectory beside the Czech brick church in Pilsen, where Emil Kapaun said his first Mass and served as a young priest before he died a prisoner of war in North Korea in 1951.
• Eisenhower Presidential Library, Museum and Boyhood Home — 23 mi
  The six-room house on Southeast Fourth Street where David and Ida Eisenhower raised six sons, and the library, museum and chapel that grew up around it in south Abilene.
• Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve — 26 mi
  A Chase County cattle ranch of the 1880s with its limestone house, three-level barn and one-room school intact, set among 40 miles of trails through unplowed tallgrass where bison and cattle both graze.
• Chase County Courthouse — 29 mi
  A Second Empire courthouse of local limestone, built in 1872 and 1873 to John G. Haskell's design and, by the county's account, the oldest courthouse in Kansas still in daily use.

More markers nearby

• Historic Abilene — 23 mi
• Council Grove — 25 mi
• A Landmark of Distinction — 29 mi
• Chase County & the Bluestem Pasture Region of Kansas — 29 mi