Regardless if they stopped to campaign, dedicate a landmark, do a little fishing or just passed through, at least eight U.S. presidents made their mark on the North State when they visited in rural Northern California.
The most widely known presidential visit was from John F. Kennedy, but JFK was not the first, nor the last president to arrive in the North State, according to historians.
Several visiting presidents came for reasons pertaining to Northern California’s pristine wilderness, including what is now the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, Whiskeytown National Recreation Area and the Klamath National Forest. Others came on the campaign trail.
Here are eight presidents who visited the Shasta-Siskiyou area — and one who probably didn’t.
John F. Kennedy
President John F. Kennedy dedicated Whiskeytown Dam on Sept. 28, 1963.
Elected in 1961, President John F. Kennedy arrived to great fanfare in 1963 for his two-day visit and the dedication ceremony of Whiskeytown Dam. Roughly 8,000 people attended, almost the equivalent of Redding’s population at the time.
Redding accountant Don Reynolds was 9 years old when he shook hands with Kennedy at the Redding airport after the president disembarked from Air Force One. “It was the president of the United States. It was pretty amazing,” Reynolds told the Record Searchlight in 2023.
John F. Kennedy visits California from Redding and Lassen to San Diego
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Pres. John F. Kennedy’s Motorcade in San Diego, California on June 6, 1963.
(Provided by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston)
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JFK also toured Lassen Volcanic National Park, where he fed a one of the park’s deer and was quoted as saying the park the superintendent had “the best job in the world.”
Kennedy’s North State visit came less than two months before his assassination in Dallas.
Herbert Hoover
US statesman Herbert Hoover (1874 – 1964), circa 1925. (Photo by Edward Gooch Collection/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
President Herbert Hoover, who was an avid fisherman, visited Siskiyou County before and after his 1929 to 1933 presidency, said Claudia East with the Siskiyou County Historical Society.
He would fish along the Klamath River, East said.
Siskiyou County elders remembered him best for sending money every year to a one-room school in which many students had little to eat. Hoover learned that one of the students at the now-gone Honolulu School — and area on Highway 96 later absorbed by the Yreka School District — died of malnutrition.
“The teacher had a soup pot for the kids so they would have some lunch,” East said. Hoover donated money every year to teacher Elise DeAvilla’s free hot lunch program until his death in 1964.
At least once he showed up in his limousine to meet the kids in person, East said. “It will be recalled that he made a visit to our school … and wrote autographs for all the youngsters,” the Siskiyou Daily News reported in 1934.
Theodore Roosevelt
President Theodore Roosevelt wrapped up a 1903 tour of California, including a visit to Siskiyou and Shasta counties, with a trip to Redding.
Former President Theodore Roosevelt speaking from a car on Milwaukee’s south side on Oct. 14, 1912, shortly before a gunman shot and wounded him in front of the Gilpatrick Hotel.
And outdoorsman and conservationist, he also made a “whistle stop” on the train in Dunsmuir. He talked to a crowd of people for about 10 minutes, East said, while railroad staff performed maintenance.
The man the National Park Service said inspired the teddy bear — after the big game hunter refused to shoot a bear on a hunting trip, according to park lore — also proclaimed much of the North State’s beautiful wilderness the Shasta and Trinity National Forests. The US Forest Service combined the two for administrative purposes in 1954, creating the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.
President Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir standing on rock at Glacier Point, Yosemite, May 1903; Yosemite Falls and cliffs of Yosemite Valley in distance.
“I have seen pretty much all the State from the ocean up to the Sierras and into them; I have come from the south and am leaving at the northern end; and I am impressed, as every man must be, with what our nation is to have within its borders a State such as this…,” Roosevelt said in a speech to his Redding audience.
During his presidency from 1901 to 1909, Roosevelt helped bring other wilderness areas under federal protection, including the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge in 1908, East said. The refuge sits at the Siskiyou County, Modoc County and Oregon border.
George W. Bush
President George W. Bush (center) and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (second from right) are briefed by U.S. Forest Service Regional Forester Randy Moore (right) on July 17, 2008. Bush visited Redding to survey the wildfire damage in the North State.
During his second term, President George W. Bush visited Redding and the Shasta-Trinity National Forest in July 2008 to speak with wildfire specialists and receive briefings. His was the first presidential visit to Redding in 45 years.
The former president brought then-California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, then-U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and then-U.S. Rep. Wally Herger with him on his visit to tour wildfire damage.
President George W. Bush speaks with U.S. Forest Service and public safety personnel in Redding during a visit to the wildfire command center on July 17, 2008. Bush was briefed on the wildfire damage in Northern California.
Bush praised firefighters’ efforts and cooperation between federal and state firefighting agencies for their part in battling 2,000 lightning-sparked fires in June. Those fires scorched almost 900,000 acres statewide.
“I would like to just let the people out here know that we’re paying attention to you in Washington, D.C.,” Bush told reporters, firefighters and victims of the 2008 wildfire season; “We care about you and we will respond as best as we possibly can.”
Rutherford B. Hayes
Built during the Gold Rush in 1855, the elegant Franco-American Hotel on Miner Street in Yreka was a primary stagecoach stop. According to historians, the hotel’s guests included President Rutherford B. Hayes and other political figures of the time as they traveled between Portland, Oregon and Northern California.
From the late 1860s to the early 1900s, the two-story brick Franco-American Hotel at 310 W. Miner St. in Yreka hosted famous politicians, artists and dignitaries including President Rutherford B. Hayes.
In 1880, during his 1877 to 1881 term, Hayes and his wife Lucy Webb Hayes — known as “Lemonaide Lucy” because of her strong support of Temperance — recuperated at the hotel after the bumpy bruising stagecoach ride from Redding to Oregon. Historical documents say the trip from Redding to Yreka took around 52 hours, East said.
The hotel building — which housed a restaurant, saloon and Wells Fargo office — was a primary stagecoach stop between Portland and Redding, said the former hotel’s current owner Gary Nelson.
The president and first lady also stopped for lunch at the Edson Foulke Ranch in Gazelle, north of Weed.
Hayes was the last president to visit the North State by stagecoach, East said; and the first sitting president to visit Oregon, according to the Oregon Historical Society.
Donald Trump
Presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump visits Redding on Friday, June 3, 2016, speaking to a crowd of about 4,000 at Redding Municipal Airport.
Before his first presidential term in 2017, then-candidate Donald Trump visited what was Redding Municipal Airport — now Redding Regional Airport — on June 7, 2016.
Thousands of people turned out in sweltering triple-digit heat to greet the future president and hear Trump’s hour-long speech on the tarmac before he re-boarded the plane and departed for the next destination on his campaign tour.
Republican presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks at the Redding Municipal Airport in Redding on Friday, June 3, 2016.
At the time, Trump said he thought 2016 could be the first time California chose a Republican president since Reagan in 1984. ‘We have a tighter path, but I’m not your typical person,’ he said. He also responded to supporters’ cheers, saying, “Redding, Redding, Redding, we love Redding. I think it’s 104 degrees. Is everyone OK?”
Bill Clinton
President Bill Clinton speaks Thursday, June 2, 2016 at Shasta College, campaigning for his wife, Hillary Clinton, for the upcoming primary election.
Former President Bill Clinton visited Shasta College in Redding on June 2, 2016.
Redding was a stop for Clinton while he campaigned on behalf of his wife and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. At the time, she was running against Bernie Sanders for the Democratic presidential nomination.
A woman takes a picture with President Bill Clinton as Redding City Council members Brent Weaver, center, and Kristen Schreder, right, and Chuck Aukland, left, also take pictures of Clinton after he spoke Thursday, June 2, 2016 at Shasta College, campaigning for his wife, Hillary Clinton, for the upcoming primary election.
The former president “really understands rural areas. He remembers what it’s like to be, you know, small-town,” said Chico resident Michael Worley, who drove to Redding to see Clinton while Sanders visited Chico that same evening.
Harry S. Truman
From the back seat of a convertible, President Harry S. Truman, hat in hand, waves to the crowd gathered to greet him on the football field at Shasta College, Redding, California. President Truman was on a Western trip at that time campaigning for Adlai Stevenson. Donor: Stella Dillenbeck.
While he didn’t visit Shasta Dam’s dedication ceremony in 1950 — he instead sent Assistant Secretary of the Interior William Warne to represent him — President Harry S. Truman visited Lake Shasta two years later. President from 1945 and with his second term due to end in 1953, Truman came to the West to campaign for Adlai Stevenson.
Historic photos document Truman’s visit to the dam, which the New York Times said he’d previously called “symbolic of the hopes and aspirations of generations ‘who would make the broadest, wisest uses of their natural resources.'”
On his 1952 visit, Truman also stopped at Shasta College in Redding. He waved his hat and greeted students while standing in his car as his driver drove onto the football field.
Did Lyndon B. Johnson or William Howard Taft visit Northern California?
Two other presidents are rumored to have visited Shasta or Siskiyou communities.
A Siskiyou County Historical Society publication said William Howard Taft, president from 1909 to 1913, may have stepped off his train during a whistle stop in Edgewood, a few miles from Weed. That stop likely happened while Taft was traveling south from Oregon in 1911 or 1912, East said.
American president Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-1973) poses with his daughters Luci Baines Johnson (R), Lynda Bird Johnson (L), and his wife Lady Bird Johnson (seated) in front of a fireplace at the White House, Washington, DC, circa 1966.
Also there’s no evidence US president from 1963 to 1969 Lyndon Baines Johnson ever visited Shasta County, historians said.
Confusion may spring out of LBJ’s signing into law legislation that created Whiskeytown-Shasta-Trinity National Recreation Area two years after President Kennedy attended the Whiskeytown Dam dedication. For more about Whiskeytown’s history, go to nps.gov.
Jessica Skropanic is a features reporter for the Record Searchlight/USA Today Network. She covers science, arts, social issues and news stories. Follow her on Twitter @RS_JSkropanic and on Facebook. Join Jessica on Record Searchlight Facebook groups Get Out! Nor Cal , Today in Shasta County and Shaping Redding’s Future. To support and sustain this work, please subscribe today. Thank you.
This article originally appeared on Redding Record Searchlight: JFK to Trump, 8 U.S presidents who visited Redding, rural California