Kibbutz Sde Boker is the realization of the dream envisioned by David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister and defense minister, who loved the Negev desert and wanted to make it bloom. Sde Boker has retained Ben Gurion’s heritage. The hut in which he lived from the day he moved there until his death in 1973 is preserved exactly as it was when he lived there. South of the kibbutz there is a campus named after Ben Gurion, which houses a desert research institute, a Ben Gurion heritage institute, a field school and a guest house, a high school where youth from all over the country study nature from nature itself, a reptile farm and a desert sculpture museum. The nearby Ben Gurion memorial site, where David and Paula Ben Gurion are buried, offers a beautiful view of the Nakhal Tsin rift.
