Richard Nixon's birthplace - Orange County, California

Yorba Linda farmhouse, built by Frank Nixon in 1913, was the birthplace of his son, Richard. Their little wooden home is still there, dwarfed by the Nixon Presidential Museum and Library, a 15-minute drive from Disneyland.

As a family attraction the kingdom of the all-conquering mouse may hold the stronger hand, but this remains the most visited presidential museum in America.

Foreign policy triumphs such as his 1972 visit to China are naturally trumpeted, but nothing can change visitors' abiding interest in Watergate. In fact, the latest exhibition is a new Watergate Gallery complete with 360-degree plasma screens featuring oral accounts, scanned archives and snippets of broadcast footage.

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When you start believing that Tricky Dicky was the maligned party, it is time to head back to Mickey and Co.

Richard Nixon Presidential Library & Museum (001 714 993 5075, www.nixonlibraryfoundation.org). Admission $9.95, under-12s $3.75

Jimmy Carter's B&B - Plains, Georgia

Stay the night at the former morgue that Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter have converted into the Plains Historic Inn. The former President and First Lady have styled each of seven suites to chronicle a different decade of 20th-century America. Plains, in rural Georgia, is at the heart of the “Jimmy Carter National Historic Site”, which includes the farmhouse where the future leader's family famously farmed peanuts.

The Carters are frequently glimpsed on Main Street, particularly at weekends when they often cycle through downtown Plains. And on Sunday mornings, Mr Jimmy, as he is known locally, teaches Sunday school to a sizeable congregation at the Maranatha Baptist Church.

Plains Historic Inn (001 229 824 4517, www.plainsgeorgia.com). Suites from $85, including breakfast

All the presidents' heads - Mount Rushmore, South Dakota

The 60ft granite faces of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt were dynamited out of South Dakota's Black Hills between 1927 and 1941. Since then Mount Rushmore has been a place of pilgrimage for patriotic Americans, with thousands-strong crowds gathering for the 9pm evening lighting ceremony in summer.

Those with the urge to see the busts of all 42 presidents can now stop at Presidents Park in the mining town of Lead, 40 miles away. The 20ft heads, along with historical facts and trivia about each, are arranged in chronological order along a winding trail. They will be joined by McCain or Obama by inauguration day next January.

Mount Rushmore National Memorial (001 605 574 2523, www.nps.gov/ moru), free. President's Park (001 605 584 9925, www.presidentspark.com) $6, children $4

JFK library - Boston, Massachusetts

The imperious edifice on Columbia Point overlooking Boston Harbour is the most spectacularly set of any presidential library. It is, however, more for sentimentalists than historians. The museum amounts to an unabashed hagiography of the 35th President and his clan. Selective videos of debates with Nixon and the President's cool during the Cuban missile crisis are masterpieces of spin.

John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum (001 617 514 1600, www.jfklibrary.net). Adults $10, under-12s free

FDR- Hyde Park, New York

The 300-acre Springwoods Estate, 90 miles from the Big Apple in upstate New York, was the home of America's longest-serving and most aristocratic president from birth in 1882 till death, in office, in 1945. Franklin D. Roosevelt's simple white tomb is on a lawn outside the imperious colonial revival-style mansion. Touring the home, gardens and trails offers some intriguing insights into the lives of the wealthy New Yorkers of that era. FDR's library and museum are also on the site.

Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum (001 800 337 8474, www.historichydepark.org). Adults $14, children free

Cowboys-In-chief - Austin, Texas

Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Lyndon B. Johnson and Ronald Reagan are the four subjects of an intriguing exhibition, Cowboys and Presidents at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum, explaining how the US Presidency has become entwined with cowboy imagery - heroic to some, but often denoting recklessness and insularity in the eyes of the political opponents and foreign observers. And while in town, check out the museum and library of one of the six-shooting quartet, LBJ.

Cowboys and Presidents (001 512 936 8746, www.thestoryoftexas.com) until January 4. Adults $7, children $4. Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum (001 512 721 0200, www.lbjlib.utexas.edu), admission free

Clinton country - Little Rock, Arkansas

Hilary may have been pipped for the Democratic Party's nomination, but she is up there with Bill in prominence at the Clinton Foundation, and not just for her role as First Lady. The Presidential Library includes a “White House in Miniature” tour, taking you through a replica Oval Office and Cabinet Rooms.

The library is just one part of the vast Clinton Presidential Centre in a public park on the banks of the Arkansas River, featuring historical and artistic exhibitions. This is one of the less airbrushed records of a presidency. Typing the word “Lewinsky” into the centre's website search facility, for example, yields more than 160 results.

William J. Clinton Presidential Library and Centre (001 501 374 4242, www.clintonlibrary.gov) adults $7, children $3

Caucus race - Des Moines, Iowa

“I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to,” Bill Bryson wrote, referring to the capital of the Midwest state that plays a unique role in the Presidential elections. Iowa holds the first national caucuses in election years, and an exhibition, Caucus Iowa, put on by the State Historical Society (until January next year) explores the state's role in catapulting candidates to prominence including Barack Obama.

East of Des Moines is the birthplace and Presidential Museum of Herbert Hoover, the only occupant of the White House to have come from Iowa. Well, somebody had to.

Herbert Hoover Presidential Library & Museum (001 319 643 5301, www.hoover.archives.gov). Adults $6, children free. State Historical Society (001 515 281 6412, www.iowahistory.org)

Lincoln's log cabin - Hodgenville, Kentucky

“My earliest recollection is of the Knob Creek place,” wrote Abraham Lincoln about the log cabin where he was born, and which was to become a symbol of his humble beginnings. In the absence of specific details, a 19th-century Kentucky cabin has been reconstructed within a Neo-Classical memorial, at the site of Lincoln's birth. A tour of the 116-acre site throws light on the formative years growing up on his father's small farm, of the man said by many to have been the greatest American president.

Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historic Site (001 270 358 3137, www.nps.gov/abli). Admission free

Obamamania - Honolulu, Hawaii

Barry Obama (as he was known then) attended Punahou High, a private school in Honolulu. On afternoons when the surf was up, he and his buddies used to head for the Ka Iwi Coast east of the Hawaiian capital. He also played tennis and basketball, with team-mates some of whom are now keen to capitalise on their associations with the man in with a sporting chance of becoming the next president. Tours of these places, along with his childhood homes and other haunts, are becoming a booming business. So, too, are T-shirts with slogans such as “Barack to the Future”.

The website Hawaiirama (www.hawaiirama.com) suggests a variety of “Barack Obama Vacation Tours”

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