JOHNSON CITY, Texas -- "This entire park tells the entire life story of our 36th President Lyndon Baines Johnson," said Charlotte McDaniel of the National Park Service.
"Today, the LBJ Ranch is about 600 acres. We have President Johnson's birthplace. We have his first schoolhouse. We also have the family cemetery where both President an Lady Bird Johnson are buried, and of course, our major structure here at the LBJ Ranch is the Texas White House," McDaniel continued.
"This basically became D.C. in Texas. He had all the communication infrastructures, security infrastructure. He's the first president for whom technology was there to be able to run the country from so far away," explained McDaniel.
"When he became president in 1963, Lyndon Johnson had more than 70 phone lines installed here at the ranch and many of those where secure lines, so you know," McDaniel expanded.
"He's able to do all this communicating that's necessary for a president from here in Texas. He said it relaxed him even though he was a workaholic. The whole time he’s here, he’s working. He was still recharging, because it is a peaceful place, and it is a place he connected through his heritage," McDaniel added.
"The Texas hill country, the landscape, the people had a profound influence on shaping Lyndon Baines Johnson. You know, growing up, it was a poor area at that time, and it made him want to help people, and of course, that’s what he grew up to do as president," McDaniel added.
"He had the Great Society, Head Start, Medicare, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act," McDaniel explained.
"That desire to help people was something he got growing up here in the Texas Hill Country. He actually said he could get more work done here in one week than two weeks in Washington D.C. It's a very peaceful relaxing place no matter what's going on,"concluded McDaniel.