The only President from Iowa, Herbert Hoover was born August 10, 1874 in a two room cabin in West Branch. His parents died while he was young, and he moved to Oregon to live with his maternal uncle. In 1891 he entered Stanford University, in their Geology Department, from which he graduated in 1895, and after a series of jobs he went to work for an English mining company, Bewick Moreing, in Australia and then China. He had met Lou Henry during her freshman year at Stanford, where she was also majoring in Geology. He proposed to her, via cable from China, and they were married in 1899. Their stay in China was interrupted by the outbreak of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. In 1901 he became a partner in Bewick Moreing and in 1908 he began his own consulting company. He traveled around the world many times in this capacity and earned a name for himself as a doctor of sick mines.

During World War I Hoover headed the Commission for Relief in Belgium, which brought food to the starving in that country, mainly children. Hot lunches were served in the schools, the prototype for hot lunches in the schools implemented later in the United States. In 1917, after the U.S. had entered the war, President Wilson appointed Hoover as Food Administrator and after the war as Director of the American Relief Administration. After 1919 Hoover headed a private charitable organization, the American Relief Administration - European Children's Fund, and later ARA- Russian Famine to continue the work of staving off starvation in Europe.

From 1921-1928 Hoover served as Secretary of Commerce. In 1929 he took office as President of the United States, where he served until 1933. After the presidency, the ex-President and Mrs. Hoover returned to California, where they were active in boys clubs and Girl Scouts respectively. Lou Hoover died in 1944. From 1939 to 1942, Hoover again headed up commissions to feed the starving in Europe during the Second World War, efforts that were stopped when Pearl Harbor was bombed. In 1945, President Truman called on Hoover to advise his administration on feeding the hungry in Europe and in 1946, Hoover made a survey of the most famine stricken places to determine where United States aid was most needed.

Herbert Hoover died on October 20, 1964 and is buried a few hundred yards from the small cottage in which he was born.