FACTBOX: Red resort, blue resort? Leaders vacation by party

(Reuters) - The deep U.S. political divide extends even to where presidents take their vacations.

For the past half century, most Republicans have favored family compounds and ranches where they could project a cowboy image. Democrats have mostly returned to the same spot -- tony Martha's Vineyard, the Massachusetts island that has become a bastion of wealthy liberalism, and where Democratic President Barack Obama heads next week.

Here are the holiday habits of some recent presidents:

* Obama is spending his first official vacation as president at a Martha's Vineyard estate. He is paying the rent -- estimated at some $25,000 -- himself. Among Obama's friends with homes on the Vineyard, whose Oak Bluffs community was historically a summer haven for well-to-do black families not welcomed elsewhere, is scholar Henry Louis Gates, whose recent arrest in his own home by a white police officer pulled Obama into a national debate over racial profiling.

* Obama's immediate predecessor, George W. Bush, a Republican, set a record for taking more vacation days than any other U.S. president. During his eight years in office, he spent 487 days at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland, and 490 days at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, where he famously cleared brush for relaxation.

* Democrat Bill Clinton visited Martha's Vineyard almost every August during his two terms, staying at the homes of wealthy friends and often mingling with the public. But with his 1996 re-election race approaching, advisers suggested that the Clintons holiday somewhere with a less elitist reputation. They went camping in Wyoming once, then, re-election secured, came back to Martha's Vineyard.

* Republican President George Bush, George W. Bush's father, took breaks at the Bush family compound on the rocky shoreline in Kennebunkport, Maine, where the president had spent much of his childhood.

* The classic image of Ronald Reagan is of the Republican president astride a horse while on holiday at his ranch, Rancho del Cielo, near Santa Barbara, California. Reagan also built fences and made furniture at his "Western White House."

* Democrat Jimmy Carter, whose 1977 to 1981 administration was shadowed by the Iranian hostage crisis and economic problems, took the fewest days off of any president, only 79, mostly at his home in Georgia.

* Gerald Ford, president from 1974 to 1977, was known for staying with friends for sporting breaks -- to golf in California and his home state of Michigan and ski in Colorado.

* Republican Richard Nixon was associated with two vacation spots, his "Western White House" in San Clemente, California, and his "Florida White House," in Miami's Key Biscayne.

* Lyndon Johnson was a Democrat, but also a Texan, who took breaks at his LBJ Ranch in his home state while president from 1963 to 1969.

* President John F. Kennedy, the scion of a rich and powerful family, spent his holidays at historic havens of the elite such as Palm Beach, Florida and Newport, Rhode Island. But he is most strongly associated with Hyannis Port on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, site of his family compound. An avid sailor, he'd take his boat to nearby Martha's Vineyard, starting its association with Democratic presidencies.

Sources: CBS News, Martha's Vineyard magazine, The Washington Post

(Compiled and written by Patricia Zengerle in Washington, edited by Todd Eastham)