Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum

The tomb sits on a bank above the Grand River, north of the main entrance and reached by a paved path from the museum plaza. A low curved wall, a lawn, the river below. Gerald Ford was interred here on 3 January 2007 after a funeral at Grace Episcopal Church in East Grand Rapids; Betty Ford was buried beside him in July 2011.

Access is free and separate from museum admission. The grounds open in the early morning and close in the late afternoon, typically from around 7:45am to 5pm, and you can walk in from the riverwalk without passing a desk. Confirm current hours with the museum if you are making a special trip.

This is a working memorial, not an exhibit. Visitors leave flowers and challenge coins. If you are travelling with children who have spent an hour in a replica Oval Office, it is worth a sentence on the path to explain what they are about to look at.

The river path continues north from here toward Ah-Nab-Awen Park and the Public Museum, which makes the grave a natural stop on a downtown riverfront walk rather than a detour.

The permanent exhibition is chronological and moves briskly: a Grand Rapids boyhood, a wartime Navy posting, a long congressional career, then the compressed 895 days of the presidency.

The Oval Office replica is full scale and furnished as it stood between 1974 and 1977, down to the desk and the drapes. The Cabinet Room reproduction in the education centre handles three decisions with interactive displays, so you can sit at the table and work through the pardon, the Mayaguez, and New York's fiscal crisis as they were argued.

Betty Ford gets substantial and deserved space. Her candour about breast cancer, addiction and mental health changed what an American first lady was allowed to say in public, and the museum treats that as a major part of the story rather than a footnote.

There is also a changing exhibition gallery, added with the 2003 extension, which rotates through travelling shows on twentieth-century political and social history. Check what is on before you go, because it can add an hour.

Photography is generally permitted in the permanent galleries. Bags may be checked. This is a federal facility operated by the National Archives, and it feels like one.

Presidential libraries usually pair the archive with the museum on one site. Ford's does not. The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library sits on the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor, about two and a half hours east; the museum is here in Grand Rapids. They are one institution administered by the National Archives, split across two cities, which is unique among presidential libraries.

The reason is straightforward: Ann Arbor was Ford's university, Grand Rapids was his home town and his political base. Rather than choose, the arrangement kept both. If you are a researcher, the papers are in Ann Arbor. If you are a visitor, everything you want is here.

The Grand Rapids connection runs through the city beyond the museum. The federal building downtown carries his name, so does the international airport south of the city, and the highway along the river is the Gerald R. Ford Freeway. For a city that has spent thirty years rebuilding its riverfront, having a president buried on it is not a small part of the civic self-image.