Chattanooga’s presidential visits from 1819 to the present

By my count, 27 presidents have visited the Chattanooga area, going back almost 200 years. A few of them visited before or after their terms, but around 15 stopped in while serving as president. (A couple of the early ones are hard to document).  With the help of various websites, the Chattanooga Public Library, Hamilton County Commissioner Greg Martin, and some terrific articles by John Shearer in Chattanoogan.com, here’s the list.  (Corrections and additions are welcome, and I will update accordingly.)

The first was our nation’s fifth president James Monroe, who visited the Brainerd Mission on the banks of the South Chickamauga Creek in 1820. Andrew Jackson was our next presidential guest, visiting a number of times prior to the Civil War. Tennessee native James Polk was also a frequent visitor during that era. Fellow Tennessean Andrew Johnson also stopped in Chattanooga several times before and after the war.

Our 18^th president, Ulysses S. Grant, was headquartered in Chattanooga when he served as a general of the Union Forces during the Civil War.  This was certainly not a presidential visit, but he did occupy the White House about five years later. The man who became president a few years after Grant, James Garfield, was also stationed in Chattanooga during the war, serving on the staff of Union General William Rosecrans.

President Rutherford Hayes made a stop in the city on September 20, 1877.  Hayes had recently appointed U. S. Senator David Key to be his Postmaster General. Key, a Chattanooga-based attorney, was the first Southerner, first Confederate officer, and first Democrat appointed to the Presidential cabinet since the Civil War. President Hayes’ visit to Chattanooga was part of a goodwill tour after a contested 1876 presidential election.

(President Garfield had planned a trip to Chattanooga in 1881 for a memorial service that was to be held by Union and Confederate veterans.  There was to be a celebration around the community of the battles of Chickamauga and Missionary Ridge. However, he was shot by a gunman in July of that year, and he died two months later. At Cameron Hill four Confederate and four Union veterans raised a flag and then lowered it half-staff in his honor.)

Presidents Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison each visited in the latter part of the 19th century. Cleveland greeted a cheering crowd on October 17, 1887, while Harrison greeted citizens at Ninth and Broad Streets in Chattanooga on April 15, 1891.  President #25, President William McKinley had visited once in 1895 while serving as governor of Ohio, and after he was elected president he opened Chickamauga Park on June 13, 1897.

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt was another presidential visitor.

During TR’s seven-year stint in the White House, he made one trip to Chattanooga, and another shortly after his second term ended. The first was on September 7-8, 1902, to speak to the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen at the City Auditorium on Ninth Street at Georgia Avenue. During his visit he also rode the Incline, walked to Point Park, attend First Baptist Church in downtown Chattanooga, and speak at the city auditorium and the courthouse lawn. No doubt he used his “bully pulpit.” (Note to young readers: Back then “bully” was a positive word, meaning “grand” or “excellent.”) He also visited the area in the fall of 1907 (“an impromptu reception of 20,000 people at the train shed”) and made a brief stop at the train station on October 9, 1910.

Woodrow Wilson spoke to the American Bar Association convention in Chattanooga on August 31, 1910, while he was president of Princeton University. On that date, he also visited the Chattanooga Golf and Country Club. He was elected president in 1912. During his single term as president, William Howard Taft was in the city on November 11, 1911 at the University of Chattanooga (he had also made a campaign stop in 1908, and visited the city in 1906 while he was Secretary of War). Then-Senator Warren G. Harding visited Chattanooga on October 13, 1920 as the Republican presidential nominee, and stayed at the Signal Mountain Inn (now the site of Alexian Village). He also spoke at the Hotel Patten downtown and the Billy Sunday Tabernacle that evening.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt made three stops in the area. On November 21, 1938, he visited Chickamauga Dam while it was under construction. He and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt also visited Point Park on Lookout Mountain. Along with numerous Washington dignitaries, he returned for the dedication of Chickamauga Dam on September 2, 1940. During both his 1938 and 1940 visits, he and the First Lady spent the night at Judge Will Cummings’ farm in the Lookout Valley area at the foot of Lookout Mountain. Cummings was a long-serving county judge, and a top local Democratic official. He helped convince his friend the president to support the dam project to ease flooding, and to provide electricity and jobs.

During World War II, FDR inspected the Women’s Army Center in Fort Oglethorpe on April 17, 1943.

On January 28, 1939, six years before Harry S Truman became president upon Roosevelt’s death, he attended the funeral of former US Senator Newell Sanders at First Baptist Church in Chattanooga. Truman was a Senator from Missouri at the time.

Although Dwight D. Eisenhower did not visit during his presidency in the 1950s, he was stationed in Fort Oglethorpe for a time during the first World War in 1918.

While in his first year as a Senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy spoke to the Downtown Rotary Club and toured TVA facilities on December 10, 1953.  A former Chattanooga newspaper reporter, then working in Washington, knew Kennedy was interested in a presidential run, and told him he should start making appearances in the south. JFK was a newlywed, having married Jacqueline Bouvier just three months earlier. He would be elected president in 1960.

Lyndon Johnson made an airport campaign stop during his successful 1964 campaign for a full term, on October 24^th of that year. (While campaigning for the vice presidency, then Sen. Johnson spoke to a crowd of about 2,000 at Memorial Auditorium on  Sept. 30, 1960). His successor, Richard Nixon visited Chickamauga Dam, and  made a campaign appearance at Memorial Auditorium on September 27, 1968, speaking to an overflow crowd. Twenty years earlier, on January 21, 1948 while a California Congressman, Nixon was at the Read House accepting an award from the Jaycees.

Nixon also spoke at Memorial Auditorium on October 10, 1964 at a rally for Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.

Then-House Minority Leader Gerald Ford spoke in support of Rep. Bill Brock in Chattanooga on May 6, 1966. As vice-president, Ford spoke at the Choo-Choo on February 18, 1974 and also attended a Republican fund-raising reception in the Riverview area. He returned on October 6, 1988 to help Congressional candidate Harold Coker at a fund-raiser at the Read House. He did not visit Chattanooga during his time as president from 1974 to 1977.

Although Jimmy Carter didn’t stop in during his single term in office (1977-81), he was frequently in the Chattanooga area before and after his presidency. During his successful 1970 campaign for governor of Georgia, he stopped by WGOW radio for a one hour visit with Chickamauga Charlie (Bob Todd). While governor, he attended the funeral of Mort Lloyd, the news anchor-turned Congressional candidate who died in a plane crash in August 1974. The funeral was held at Brainerd Church of Christ in Chattanooga. As Carter was beginning his run for the presidency he spoke to the local Democratic party’s Kefauver dinner on August 22, 1974 at the Tivoli Theater.  On June 20, 1975 he made a campaign appearance at the Downtown Sheraton, and a horse farm in Wildwood, Georgia. After his presidency, on May 28, 1985, he spoke to several Chattanooga foundation leaders at the Mountain City Club, seeking funding for his presidential library and the Carter Center. He attended the Bass Masters Classic fishing tournament weighing-in ceremony at the UTC Arena on August 15, 1986.  He and his extended family vacationed at the Chattanooga Choo Choo on August 23, 1991. He and his wife Rosalynn spoke to Hamilton County Democrats at the Kefauver dinner at the Chattanooga Convention Center on October 18, 2014.

President Ronald Reagan’s visit to Chattanooga on May 19, 1987 was among the most memorable.  The main event was at the UTC Arena.  The first item on the agenda was lunch with some of the county’s top students. Most of his speech centered around the theme of “Excellence in Education.”

The event was filled with pomp and circumstance, literally, because it served as the commencement exercise for three thousand high school seniors.

Then-White House communications director Tom Griscom, a native Chattanoogan, remembers how the trip was arranged, and a fun fact about a local fast food favorite.

Griscom said, “The White House was looking for a graduation event. It was a surprise to learn that my hometown was chosen. This was a few months after Sen. Howard Baker had become chief of staff to President Reagan. Sen. Baker, a longtime Krystal hamburgers fan, felt it would be a great addition to the trip to serve Krystals on Air Force One. The Krystal Company set up grills in the hangar, adjacent to the presidential aircraft. As the hamburgers were being brought aboard Air Force One, the White House physician questioned whether they could be served to the President since there had not been a food test. Sen. Baker quickly interceded, and the burgers were served on the aircraft as it lifted off from Lovell Field for the return trip to Washington.

Reagan had previously visited Chattanooga twice. On May 21, 1976, he spoke to 4,000 people at Tennessee Temple during his unsuccessful campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. And on April 1, 1959, long before he entered politics, he spoke at the Hotel Patten during a public relations tour for General Electric, for whom he acted as spokesman. Reagan’s visit was co-sponsored by the Chattanooga Jaycees and the Ad Club.

George H. W. Bush was in Chattanooga during the 1980 presidential election campaign, before he was chosen as Reagan’s running mate.  He later appeared at a Chattanooga fundraiser in 1986, hinting at his run for the presidency in 1988.  He returned just before election day 1992 for an airport rally (accompanied by singers Ricky Skaggs and Naomi Judd), and in on April 3, 2000, he and his wife Barbara helped open the Chattanooga Lookouts new baseball stadium, then known as BellSouth Park. On April 2, 2003, “Bush 41” visited Chattanooga for a fishing and golf trip (at the Honors Course) and dined at J. Alexander’s near Hamilton Place.

The elder Bush’s son George W. Bush held an airport rally with running mate Dick Cheney just before the 2000 presidential election, and returned for a health care summit at the Trade Center  in February 2007, also visiting Erlanger Medical Center and Porker’s Bar-B-Q. He also visited with Chattanooga accountant Joe Decosimo, who handled some of the family’s financial dealings.

Barack Obama visited Chattanooga while in office, touring and speaking at Amazon on July 30, 2013.

Long before being elected president Donald Trump was at the Chattanooga airport, Lovell Field with then-girlfriend Marla Maples on Christmas Eve 1990.  He also visited Northwest Whitfield High School’s homecoming football game in Tunnel Hill, Georgia with Maples (the school’s 1981 homecoming queen) on October 21, 1991, and at an Alzheimer’s fund-raising reception (hosted by Maples) at the  Dalton, GA Golf and Country Club on March 21, 1992.

On November 4, 2018, President Trump visited the UTC Arena to campaign for local Republican candidates. Vice President Mike Pence accompanied President Trump during his visit.

On November 4, 1977, the man who became our 46^th president in 2021, Joe Biden, then a 35-year-old Democratic Senator from Delaware, spoke at the Kefauver dinner for Hamilton County Democrats at the Downtown Sheraton.

His next visit to Chattanooga was on December 19, 2003, when he cheered his home state Delaware Blue Hens as they routed Colgate 40-0 in the NCAA Division I football championship game at Finley Stadium. At the time, he was still a United States Senator.

He returned to Chattanooga as Vice President, on August 15, 2015, speaking at the Fallen Five Memorial Service at the UTC Arena.

From military service, vacationing, campaigning, to dedicating government facilities, the Chattanooga area has proven to be a popular destination for our commanders-in-chief.