In this presidential election year, it’s interesting to recall visits to Clark County by presidents and presidential candidates in the early days, before 1950.
Although the population of Washington Territory grew rapidly in the late 19th century — 365 percent between 1880 and 1890 — presidential visits started slowly. In part, that was because Washington residents couldn’t vote before statehood was achieved in 1889.
In 1888, when the Republicans nominated Benjamin Harrison for president, Vancouverites celebrated by burning bonfires and shooting fireworks. The Vancouver Independent, a staunchly Republican newspaper, said the city displayed an “exuberance of spirit.”
“We cannot vote for president on this side of the (state) line, but we can make just as much noise as the Oregon fellows,” the paper added.
The first local presidential visit came from the only president ever to live in Vancouver. Ulysses S. Grant visited with his wife, Julia, for two days in 1879.
Rutherford B. Hayes was the first incumbent president to visit the West Coast. In October 1880, as a guest of the Vancouver Barracks, he stayed several days, long enough to attend the Methodist Church before riding a steamer up the Columbia River. A crowd met him at the docks on his return.
When Republican President Teddy Roosevelt spoke in Kalama in 1903, citizens organized a special train from Vancouver to hear him. The train left at 7 a.m. and returned at 5 p.m. Roosevelt won the 1904 national election and secured Clark County and Washington. Clark County cast 2,436 votes for him and only 515 for Democrat Alton B. Parker.
In that 1904 election, Socialist candidates got 257 votes. A Prohibition candidate received 132, while the Socialist Labor and Peoples Party landed votes in the mid-20s. Locally, Socialists outpolled the Democrats in seven rural precincts. Although third-party numbers were low, they surpassed those of the Democrats, foreshadowing the slow shift toward progressive ideas and forthcoming violence against unions like the International Workers of the World.
From a platform at the Vancouver train station early on Oct. 11, 1911, President William Howard Taft spoke to a crowd for 10 minutes. Afterward, newspapers reported that civic leaders gifted him two boxes of “choice Clarke County prunes.” On July 4, 1923, President Warren G. Harding made a whistle-stop, also speaking at the train station. He, too, was given boxes of prunes. A month later, he died of a heart attack. An urban myth accused the prunes of contributing to his death.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt first spoke in Vancouver at Esther Short Park when he was the 1920 Democratic vice presidential candidate. In the election of 1932, he beat Herbert Hoover by about 4,000 votes in Clark County. His Republican opponent, Wendell Wilkie, spoke at the train station in 1940 but lost to Roosevelt. In 1942, during World War II, Roosevelt visited Alcoa’s Vancouver aluminum smelter; the visit was unannounced due to security.
