Fifty years after President Richard Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, California, has created a permanent outdoor exhibit called “The President and the Planet: Richard Nixon and the Environment.”
The exhibit is open for self-guided tours, and displays the impact of many of Nixon’s numerous environmental initiatives, such as the Clean Air Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and the Endangered Species Act.
“It was in 1970 that my grandfather signed a series of executive orders to protect the environment, which culminated in the creation of the EPA in December of 1970,” said Christopher Nixon Cox, the eldest grandson of Nixon and a member of the board of directors of the Nixon Foundation, at an online event to dedicate the exhibit on Dec. 3.
Cox said Nixon always greatly enjoyed the outdoors. As a child, Nixon would ride his bicycle from Whittier to Los Angeles every day to pick fresh produce to sell at his parents’ small grocery store.
However, in the 1960s, Nixon witnessed hundreds of New Yorkers die from toxic smog, while oil spills devastated California’s wildlife, said Cox.
“He felt it was his mission to bequeath a better environment to his children and grandchildren than the one he had seen develop in the 1940s, ‘50s, and ’60s,” Cox said.
During the event, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former governor of California, was interviewed by Hugh Hewitt, president and CEO of the Nixon Foundation.
“I was always a big fan of Richard Nixon,” said Schwarzenegger. “I became a Republican because of Richard Nixon.”
The former governor attended the grand opening of the Nixon Library in 1989, where he first met Nixon in person.
“He [said], ‘You should run for governor.’ So he was actually the first one that proposed that idea to me,” said Schwarzenegger.
