Nixon Felt at Home in San Clemente

It sits on a bluff above one of the best surfing spots in the world, with a view that can reach 60 miles to San Clemente Island on a clear day. It's so isolated that you can barely see the tip of a gazebo or get a peek of some of the Spanish-style buildings from the beach. And the closest you can get to it is a model at the city's public library.

This house in San Clemente was once Richard Nixon's Western White House, the place where he would drag his Cabinet and aides for weeks at a time while he conducted affairs of state and met leaders such as Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev and South Vietnamese leader Nguyen Van Thieu.

San Clemente was once a small city at the southern tip of Orange County that few people had heard of. If they had driven through on the way to San Diego, maybe they had seen signs on the freeway.

Then, in 1969, Nixon moved in. Suddenly San Clemente was on the map, and signs at the city limits announced, "Home of the Western White House."

Although he had grown up in Southern California and had represented the state in the House and the Senate, Nixon was living in New York when he was elected president in 1968.

Shortly after the election, presidential assistant John Ehrlichman turned to Fred Divel, a 19-year-old campaign aide from San Clemente, and asked him to scout around for a home for Nixon on the coast.

Divel, now 56, focused on the nearly 30-acre estate owned by the daughter of Henry Hamilton Cotton, one of the early developers of San Clemente and once the Democratic Party's national finance chairman.

Franklin Roosevelt had been a guest at the estate several times and played poker in the gazebo-like card room that still stands at the top of the bluff.

Divel presented the idea to Ehrlichman, complete with aerial photos. "The next thing you know, [Nixon] was checking out the swallows at San Juan Capistrano," Divel said.

Presidential Partiality

The area was a favorite of Nixon's, and he had proposed to his future wife, Pat, while sitting in his Oldsmobile on a cliff above nearby Dana Point.

Nixon bought the 10-room home and renamed it La Casa Pacifica. He had the tennis court scooped out and a swimming pool built in its place, with a barrier to protect against the wind. A group called Orange County Golfing Friends of the President paid for a seven-hole course.

The location made for easy travel from Washington. Nixon would fly into El Toro Marine base, take a helicopter to the nearby Coast Guard station and ride a golf cart to the house.