The National Museum of the Pacific War is located in Fredericksburg, Texas, the boyhood home of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. Fleet Admiral Nimitz served as CinCPAC, Commander in Chief, United States Pacific Fleet during World War II. The six acre site includes the Admiral Nimitz Museum which is housed in the old Nimitz Hotel and tells the story of Fleet Admiral Nimitz beginning with his life as a young boy through his naval career as well as the evolution of the old hotel.Nimitz HotelCharles Henry Nimitz, German merchant marine and grandfather of Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, was born in Bremen in Germany. He emigrated to the United States by way of South Carolina in 1844. In 1846, Nimitz moved to Fredericksburg with the initial settlers. In 1848, he married Sophie Dorothea Mueller, and nine of the couple's twelve children lived to adulthood. Local trouble maker James P. Waldrip tried unsuccessfully to recruit Nimitz into Die Haengebande. Charles Nimitz built the Nimitz Hotel in 1852, and deeded it over to his son Charles H. Nimitz, Jr., in 1906. Locals referred to it as the Steamboat Hotel because of the ship's bow front. The hotel had its own saloon and brewery, a ballroom that doubled as a theatre, a smokehouse, and a bath-house. In its heyday, the hotel hosted such guests as Horace Greeley, Johnny Ringo, President Rutherford B. Hayes, General Robert E. Lee, General James Longstreet, General Phil Sheridan, William Sydney Porter and General Ulysses S. Grant.
