Mentor is a suburban town on Lake Erie, about 30 km northeast of Cleveland. The principal reason to visit is the James A. Garfield National Historic Site, which preserves the home and property of the 20th President of the United States.
Garfield acquired the property in 1876 to house his large family, naming it Lawnfield. In 1880 it became the setting for the first successful front-porch presidential campaign in American history — reporters camped outside while Garfield stayed home and received delegations, a strategy that worked. Garfield was inaugurated on 4 March 1881 and assassinated just six months into his term. Four years later his family added a memorial library wing, establishing a precedent that would eventually become the American presidential library tradition. The site is operated jointly by the National Park Service and the Western Reserve Historical Society.
Beyond Lawnfield, Mentor has more to offer than its suburban reputation suggests. Headlands Beach State Park to the northeast has the longest natural sand beach in Ohio, backed by protected dunes and excellent birding habitat. The Mentor Lagoons Nature Preserve adds wetland walking and kayaking along the lakeshore. For the historically curious, the town was also the site of the 20th Century Limited derailment of 1905, one of the worst rail accidents in Ohio history.