A Day in Little Rock, Arkansas: Clinton Library and a Bunch of Bridges

I’m not sure I’ve ever been to a city as proud of its bridges as Little Rock. To be fair, it has some very nice bridges. And you have to get across the river somehow, right? Might as well be on your choice of several lovely bridges. 

Little Rock was our second stop on our way to visit Hendrix College in September; it’s actually only about half an hour from Hendrix, so we stayed here the night before our visit, spent the morning and early afternoon touring, then headed down the highway to the college in the late afternoon.

It was a Sunday, and a lot of the sites didn’t open until afternoon, so we spent the morning wandering downtown, getting brunch, and walking across a bridge. We had brunch at the very popular on Sunday mornings (but also very good) At the Corner:

There’s a history museum downtown that we didn’t get to go to because it didn’t open until afternoon, but we walked by and looked at a couple of the old buildings on the site:

These are really more pictures of the flowers than the buildings. The flowers were pretty.

We stopped by the H.U. Lee International Gate and Garden, right across from our brunch place:

And we walked across our first bridge: Junction Bridge:

And then it was time to head to the Clinton Library. If we’d been in town on a weekday, we would have skipped or abbreviated all the walking around downtown in favor of visiting Little Rock Central High School. But they only do tours on weekdays, so we were out of luck. And there were a number of other places we likely would have gone if we’d had Abe with us, but that weren’t especially exciting to a 17 year old and a grown-up. A glimpse into the future!

Anyway, though: presidential library! I’ve been to only two other presidential libraries: JFK’s in Boston and LBJ’s in Austin. Just the presidents who mostly go by initials. Strangely, we’ve never been to the Jimmy Carter library in Atlanta, even though we live so close by. So I don’t have a ton to compare the Clinton library to, but I’ll say that it seemed a lot smaller–both in size and in scope of exhibits–than either of the other two I’ve been to.

Adult admission is $10, kids 6-17 are $6, and there’s a whole slew of discounts for veterans and students and seniors and all that.

A guided tour started shortly after we got there, so we did that, and I highly recommend it as a way to get an overview of the museum. The tour lasted about an hour and a half if I remember right, and the stated purpose was to give us an introduction to the museum so that we could decide what parts we wanted to revisit in more detail after the tour.

There was a short film and then we headed over to a recreation of the cabinet room:

Then to the main exhibit hall, which was divided up into themes (crime, international relations, economy, etc) and our guide spoke briefly about each one.

On the next floor there’s a re-creation of the Oval Office (where you can’t take pictures because they have a professional photographer in there) and more lifestyle-y exhibits on life at the White House and gifts given to the First Family and that sort of thing.

Overall I found the Clinton library kind of….dry compared to the others I’ve seen. It focuses only on the presidential years which, we were told, was how President Clinton wanted it. And I wonder if the heavy hand Bill Clinton had in planning his own library didn’t really serve it well. Aside from the super defensive section about the impeachment, the exhibit halls are sort of a laundry list of policy accomplishments–a very long resume. And I can certainly understand wanting to tell everyone about that stuff, but I do think the place could benefit from more of a sense of narrative. But maybe that’s inevitable with such a recent president. I’ll have to go back in 20 or 30 years (when I will be closer to the age of the average presidential library visitor, incidentally. Ari was definitely the youngest person on very large tour. Which reminds me to mention that this isn’t the best place for young kids. I mean, you probably knew that already. But even more than other presidential libraries I’ve been to, this is definitely geared to adults and teens).

And then we headed out and walked over just one more bridge: the Clinton Presidential Park Bridge that’s right outside the library. It was, I should mention, VERY hot this day, even though it was late September, and we almost just headed for the air conditioned car instead. But a local guy hanging out outside seemed very proud of the bridge and encouraged us to take a look, so we did. It is a nice bridge.

And then it was on to Hendrix! We had a great time checking out Little Rock (it was Ari’s first time in Arkansas, and my first time in Arkansas for more than a quick trip across the river once when I was in Memphis). If Ari goes to Hendrix I’m sure we’ll be bringing the whole family back to see all the things we missed.

Maybe you would like to pin this?