A little less than a year after being elected the 27th president of the U.S. in 1908, William Howard Taft planned an official trip to Los Angeles that included visits to not only the city itself, but also to several of its outlying areas. These included the first, and so far, the only visit to San Pedro by a sitting U.S. president.
San Pedro was then the newly minted home of the Port of Los Angeles. The once-independent city had been officially consolidated into the larger metropolis on Aug. 28, 1909.
The San Pedro transformation had been underway for several years. The use of the area as a port was pioneered by shipping magnate Phineas Banning in the latter half of the 1800s.
As for the 52-year-old Taft, he’d already had a long and distinguished career as a lawyer and had been awarded a federal judgeship in 1891. In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt named him Secretary of War, and he made it clear that Taft would get his endorsement after Teddy finished his second term in 1908.
Taft easily defeated William Jennings Bryan in the November 1908 election, and took office on March 4, 1909. He proposed the Western trip literally days later on March 9. He floated the idea of visiting Alaska on the trip, but that was deemed impractical due to the time and great expense it would demand.
Seven months later, he began his westward cross-country train trip, still no small undertaking in that era. The purpose of the unprecedented journey went beyond just getting a first-hand look at the still-developing West. Taft also wanted to inspect the coast’s military fortifications, which were sparse at the time.
In addition, he needed to take a look at Western seaports, including the new one in San Pedro, to test their ability to handle increased traffic from the Panama Canal, then under construction. He was a major booster of the Canal, which opened in 1914, two years after he left office.
The California swing began in San Francisco, where Taft arrived on his custom private railroad car, the Mayflower, on Oct. 8, 1909. From there, he spent two days in Yosemite National Park, with naturalist John Muir as his guide.
The presidential entourage arrived in downtown Los Angeles at the Arcade Depot, Union Station’s predecessor, on the morning of Oct. 11, 1909. After a brief welcome in Los Angeles, Taft got right back on the train for the trip down to San Pedro.
He arrived at the Fifth St. train station San Pedro shortly before 8 a.m. The town had been decorated festively with flags and bunting for the occasion, and the reception by locals was a warm one.
Dozens of boats joined the procession as it proceeded around the outer harbor. Taft was impressed by the work that had been done on the new harbor so far, and saw its potential.
From there, Taft boarded the launch Perdito at the dock for a harbor tour. As the boat navigated the waters, boats saluted it by sounding their ship’s whistles and bells. When the Perdito passed the USS McCullough, the sailors onboard sounded a twenty-one gun salute in tribute.
After the harbor tour, he said, “One thing you should do. Complete that breakwater. That will make one of the finest harbors in the world,” according to the Los Angeles Herald. The breakwater, then in the latter stages of its construction, was completed in 1912.
Back on land, the procession motored over to the proposed military site, with crowds of schoolchildren and adults greeting the President along the way.
Upon seeing the future setting of Fort MacArthur, the Herald reported Taft to have said, “You must have fortifications. This is a wonderful site. What a fine base of supplies it will make. I did not believe such a site existed in this neighborhood.”
Construction of Fort MacArthur began in 1914. For a time, it was the only military fortification on the Southern California coast except for the naval operations in San Diego. After touring the military site, the entourage returned to the Fifth Street train depot, ending their San Pedro stay.
The train made two very brief stops on its way back up north, one in Wilmington and one in Compton, before returning to Los Angeles for a massive celebratory parade at 1 p.m.
President Taft would go on to visit Pasadena, Monrovia and the Riverside-San Bernardino area the next day before boarding the train for his return trip to Washington, D.C.
President Taft and Teddy Roosevelt would have a political falling out near the end of Taft’s term. Roosevelt decided to form a third party, the Bull Moose Party, in 1912 after losing his bid for the Democratic Party’s nomination.
The move split the Republican vote, and the Democratic Party candidate Woodrow Wilson ended up defeating them both in the 1912 general election. But Taft did finally get his dream job when Wilson’s successor, President Warren Harding, appointed him as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1921. Taft served in that role until his death at 72 on March 8, 1930, just weeks after retiring from the high court. He remains the only U.S. president also to have served as Chief Justice.
Sources:
Los Angeles Herald archives.
Los Angeles Times archives.
Port of Los Angeles: An Illustrated History From 1850 to 1945, by Ernest Marquez and Veronica De Turenne, Angel City Press, 2007.
Wikipedia.
