Jim Kershner’s This day in history » On the Web: spokesman.com/topics/local-history

From our archives, 100 years ago

Reports continued to pour in about President William Howard Taft’s visit to the region on Oct. 7, 1911.

The first stop came in Walla Walla, where Taft addressed a crowd of 5,000 in a city park. Then he hopped back on his train and made a brief stop in Starbuck. He passed out cigars to the workingmen and asked the many children in the crowd if they had been let out of school early.

When he was reminded it was Saturday, Taft said, “Oh, I’m sorry I did not come on Friday so you could have had three days (off), for I am sure you would have remembered me longer.”

He then proceeded to Lewiston, for that city’s first-ever presidential visit. About 8,000 gathered in a city park – the largest crowd “ever assembled in northern Idaho” – to hear Taft speak on the issues of railroads and antitrust laws.

Then Taft hopped back on the train and went to Moscow, Idaho, where he mispronounced the name of the city and then made a joke of it by saying he had once been to another city (in Russia) that pronounced it a little differently. The crowd and Taft both laughed good-naturedly.

His Spokane visit (discussed in Friday’s column) came at the end of this long day.