My husband and I visited in September 2013. Really enjoyed seeing the restored apartment and getting a feel for where the Reagans lived and worked when Ronald was born. The store his dad worked in is across the street and his mom's church is still there. Our tour guide was very good and made us feel welcome. I enjoyed it.
If you are a fan of President Reagan you will enjoy your visit. It is a bit out of the way, however that makes it an enjoyable ride down back roads and a visit to a small town. It really is a great place to visit for Reagan fans and it is also interesting simply to see what small town was like in yester year. The furnishings are "period pieces" so not what the Reagans actually had. The museum downstairs has some interesting artifacts. If you are in Tampico you should go on to Dixon to see his boyhood home.
small town america. theres a gas station and a few bars. theres a nice cafe for lunch. the have a soup bar at lunch time and let me tell you the soups were yummy. try there chicken strip. they are tasty too.
The town is tiny and doesn't have much to do.The site is historical and that is the main attraction. There is an excellent Amish restaurant just down the block .The food is high quality and the price is good.The Hennepin Canal Parkway is just outside of town and is an excellent place to walk along and to fish or ride a bike.The pathway along the canal is tar and chip,so it is easy to walk on or bike on.
People were nice. I had ' dutch apple pia ala mode ' at the Dutch diner.. I stopd by again a few wee\ks ago and had lunch there as well.
If you have any appreciation for the life of President Ronald Reagan, then this is a place to visit. Whether or not you choose to see the other obscure towns where Reagan lived and attended school, it is definitely worth seeing where Reagan was born. If you consider yourself a "Reagan fan" you should make this stop on the map!Like many presidents before him, he was born at home. The modest apartment-above-a-storefront reveals his early beginnings. We loved that the place was in original condition and hadn't been restored to perfection.Our guide, Joan Johnson, was friendly and helpful. She was even gracious enough to stay past regular business hours to accommodate our visit. She answered every question we had! What knowledge she has acquired in becoming the true docent of Reagan's birthplace.If you come from afar, this town will surely slow you down. It is sleepy. The cafe and bars are simple. The people seem willing to engage with visitors. We liked them all. Happy 101st Mister Reagan! This is their website: http://www.tampicohistoricalsociety.com/R_Reagan_Birthplace_Museum.html
The guided tour of the restored boyhood home (not his birthplace--that is in nearby Tampico) of Ronald Regan is worth an hour of your time when visiting Dixon.
The Reagans lived in an apartment over the bank in downtown Tampico. On the short tour, one can see the apartment where they lived, including the room where the President and his brother were born. It has been restored nicely so that one also gets a sense of what the time period was like. Underneath the apartment, the bank has been restored, and upstairs, visitors can go through the pass-through window to the next apartment (not restored) and then go downstairs into the visitors' center, which was a grocery store when the Reagan family lived there. There's really not much else to see in Tampico, but we intentionally went out of our way to see this and thought it was worth the trip.
I really enjoyed the Ronald Reagan Birthplace. Joan was excellent in making an appt outside of hours to visit. My wife and kids (10-16 years of age) liked the apartment tour and the bank tour. It is definitely worth the stop. It is not just a tour of Reagan's Birthplace, it is a tour of what it was like to grow up in small town Illinois in the 20's.
The very direct simplicity is striking. When then president Reagan commented about life in the White House that he was "once more living over the store," Tampico comes stunningly to mind. Not far away to the north are the nature preserves in the Green River Valley, and to the northeast lies the cheese center of Walnut.Nearby is also the biking / hiking / equestrian (?) trail following the Feeder for the Hennepin Canal