Presidential tracks: Many U.S. leaders have visited Beehive State
Most presidents since Ulysses S. Grant have visited the Beehive State. Some sites have been toured by almost all of them — such as Temple Square. Some presidents picked other out-of-the-way destinations, such as Flaming Gorge Dam or Zion National Park (before it was a park). Some hit the ski slopes or local golf courses.
Some visits were described as akin to Beatlemania, with Utahns going a little crazy trying to see their president. Then there were the Rough Riders, veterans of the Spanish American War, who came to see their old commander, Theodore Roosevelt, as he spoke at the City-County Building in Salt Lake City on May 29, 1903.
Deseret News reports at the time said many of them riding horses galloped toward the stand where Roosevelt was seated. The president rose and halted them saying, "Don't try to gallop boys, go slowly, you might hurt some of the children." When he was told some had come 300 miles to see him, he said, "By George, that's fine. The last time I was here, I was out riding with them."
The Tabernacle
Ulysses Grant went to see it on the first presidential visit to Utah in 1875. So did Rutherford Hayes a few years later. Choirs were waiting there to perform for Benjamin Harrison, but they were disappointed as he was kept busy and far away by some prominent non-Mormons during a visit in 1891.
Teddy Roosevelt was the first president to speak at the Tabernacle. Others who also did included William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter. Many other presidents visited it through the years, some enjoying concerts or organ recitals.
Joseph Smith Building
When it was the Hotel Utah, it hosted every president between Taft and Ronald Reagan at least once. They often dined there with presidents of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Maybe the most interesting visit there was by Truman on June 26, 1945. Earlier in the day, he participated in the founding of the United Nations in San Francisco. In a last-minute decision, he chose to spend the night in Salt Lake City for what his daughter, Margaret, later said were sentimental reasons.
She wrote, "In those first months of his presidency, he often seemed to act out of a desire to put himself in touch with men and places from his past. Salt Lake City was a place that had deep meaning for him. It was associated in his memory of his grandfather," Solomon Young who led wagon trains and freight trains from Missouri to Utah. Truman credited Brigham Young for once saving his grandfather financially by helping him sell freight, and Truman was an admirer of Brigham.
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The anecdotes in this article are fun. For more details on presidential...
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