The Italianate structure known as the U. S. Grant Home was built in 1859-60 as a residence by Alexander J. Jackson of Galena.
The Grant Home site includes several small mid-19th century homes comprising the three-block "Grant Home Historic Neighborhood." "Grant State Park," a tree-shaded area south of the Grant Home has picnic tables for public use. Also in the park is the Long House, a log building constructed ca. 1851 and moved to the site from Elizabeth, Illinois in 1976, representing a typical settler's home of mid-nineteenth-century Jo Daviess County.
Visitors are provided with an interpreter-conducted tour of the Grant Home. Interpreters are dressed in historic costumes from April through October. The tour emphasizes Grant as the victorious war leader, the 1868 candidate for president, and the eighteenth President of the United States. The adjacent building contains exhibits on Grant's life and history of the Grant Home. The first floor of the Home is accessible to persons with disabilities, as are the exhibit room and restrooms in the building next door. The Home's second floor is not accessible.