Hope, Arkansas: Bill Clinton's boyhood home in Hope has been a museum for more than a decade, but this is the first year that visitors are seeing the home as part of the National Park Service.
The home became a national historic site at the start of the year, and Clinton said at its formal dedication in April that he wants the home to stand as a reminder of the values he learned as a child.
The home's new designation as a national park site is expected to draw more tourists to Hope, a southwest Arkansas city of about 12,000 with a struggling economy.
The two-story, white, wood-frame home was restored to reflect the style of the late 1940s and early 1950s, when the former president lived there.
Toys from the period are strewn about one side of the yard and inside is the very couch owned by Clinton's grandparents, Eldridge and Edith Cassidy.
Clinton's father, William Blythe, was killed in a car accident while his mother, Virginia, was pregnant with Clinton, so she and her new baby moved in with her parents at the home at 117 S Hervey Street.
Centre of family life
They lived there for four years, but even after Virginia remarried and moved to another house in Hope, the Hervey Street home remained the centre of Bill Clinton's family life. He spent weekends and summers with his grandparents and gathered there with extended family members.
The historic site includes a second building which has been converted into a visitor centre. Inside are displays that tell how Eldridge Cassidy served black and white customers at his small grocery store — an uncommon business practice during segregation — and how he'd help families in need with free food and forgiven debts .
Widely admired abroad
Opened by the Clinton Birthplace Foundation in 1997, the museum has had more than 80,000 visitors, from 159 countries. Clinton is widely admired abroad, so catering to foreign tourists is a key part of the museum's mission.
Local officials say they expect greater numbers of visitors as they take in Clinton's presidential library and museum in Little Rock, 177km northeast.
Another museum and former Clinton home is located in Fayetteville in northwest Arkansas, where Clinton lived with Hillary Rodham Clinton while he worked as a law professor at the University of Arkansas. They were married in the living room.
Clinton said during the dedication in Hope the way he was brought up guided him in his lifelong political efforts to ensure opportunity for "ordinary people."
