In this classic January 13, 1971 photograph, President Richard Nixon and his wife Pat rest in their San Clemente home, the “Western White House,” as it had become known, on couches with the type of garish upholstery that was inexplicably popular at that time. The seaside home, formerly known as the H.H. Cotton House and La Casa Pacifica, hosted a slew of politicos during Nixon’s abbreviated two-term presidency, including Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev. The house was the disgraced president’s oasis after he was forced to resign from office in 1974 during the Watergate scandal. The famous Frost/Nixon interviews were planned to be held at the San Clemente abode, but radio signals from the nearby Coast Guard station interfered with the TV equipment. From a 1983 New York Times article about Nixon’s lifestyle in San Clemente:

“San Clemente was in its prime in the early 1970’s when President Nixon’s Spanish-style residence here, Casa Pacifica, served as the ‘Western White House.’ Memories of the excitement of Government helicopters whirring overhead are still fresh. Regardless of how they feel about Mr. Nixon, a lot of people here miss that.

”I find it pretty humorous that San Clemente looks at Richard Nixon as a claim to fame,’ said Harold Warman, a college instructor who said he believed ”any man who becomes President of the United States has made so many moral compromises he’s sold out long before he even got there.’

But even as one of Mr. Nixon’s few critics in San Clemente, Mr. Warman suggested that the status of being a President’s home away from home gave life here a certain style.

‘If he wanted a pizza, they’d circle Shakey’s Pizza with the Secret Service,’ he recalled. ‘One day when I was down there, they brought him in by helicopter and closed the pizza parlor off. That’s pretty impressive.'”

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Soundless footage of the Nixons receiving celebrity guests (John Wayne, Glenn Campbell, Frank Sinatra, etc.) at their San Clemente home in 1972: