“Billgrimage” Passport Brochure Unveiled

LITTLE ROCK – The Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism this week unveiled the William J. Clinton Arkansas Passport, a brochure that guides travelers to the four Arkansas cities that former President Bill Clinton has called home and to sites within each that were important in his life.

“Since the opening of the William J. Clinton Presidential Center and Park in Little Rock, our state has been attracting an abundance of tourists who are interested in Bill Clinton,” said Joe David Rice, Arkansas’s tourism director. “There was clearly a need for a comprehensive guide to enable tourists to experience for themselves President Clinton’s roots in Arkansas, and we were excited when our partners in the presidential cities of Hope, Hot Springs, Fayetteville and Little Rock came up with this idea.”

To commemorate their journey through presidential history, visitors can have their brochure, which resembles a passport, stamped in each of the cities. Each city has its own “passport” page containing information on its Clinton-related landmarks and detailing where within the city visitors can have their brochure stamped.

The Clinton-related sites in the brochure include the following:

• Clinton Center in Hope, which preserves the former president’s first boyhood home;
• Hot Springs High School, where Clinton played in the marching band, and McClard’s, a Hot Springs’ barbecue joint favored by Clinton;
• Clinton House Museum in Fayetteville, which preserves the home where Clinton and former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, now a U.S. senator, lived and were married in the mid-1970s;
• In Little Rock, the Governor’s Mansion and the State Capitol, where Clinton lived and worked as the state’s governor, and the Old State House Museum, the former state capitol where Clinton celebrated both of his presidential election victories.

Funded by the department and the four cities, the brochure is available at the state’s 14 welcome centers, other visitor information centers throughout the state and at sites in each of the presidential cities. Approximately 90,000 copies have been printed at a cost of slightly more than $20,000, Rice said.