Coast Chronicles: At least 19 presidents have visited the Mississippi Coast

Teddy Roosevelt bought a “mullet gun” and ate Biloxi Bacon. Zack Taylor pounded so hard on his podium that his Bay St. Louis platform collapsed. Jimmy Carter personally helped build houses for the Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast.

Harry Truman relished local pralines and spiced pecans. Woodrow Wilson remained long enough in Pass Christian, nearly three weeks, that the beachfront mansion he stayed in was nicknamed The Dixie White House. Andy Jackson was likely the first future president to set foot here.

And so the Mississippi Gulf Coast presidential stories go...

Unlike today’s visits from presidents which rarely rate higher than unadulterated politics, 19th and 20th Century presidents often left behind stories worth repeating.

At least 19 American presidents have visited here, sometimes when they were the commander-in-chief, sometimes in the early or later stages of their lives.

Memories of such visits are lost in time, but the pages of this newspaper have recorded them for researchers willing to dig through microfilm, now often available with faster digital searches.

What newspaper digging will uncover is a coastal region that was unceremonious, laid-back, hard-working and growing. In other words, this often unexpected 80-mile-wide coastal slice of Mississippi was inviting to those either wary, weary or aspiring of political leadership.

The research will also show that as the decades progress, the visits turn more toward political stumping and vote wooing than enjoying coastal amenities.

Among those in more recent memory would be Gerald Ford in 1987, riding a convertible down the beach stretch between Bay St. Louis to Pascagoula, as bands greeted him with “Hail to the Chief.”

The man who unseated Ford, Jimmy Carter, made two presidential campaign swings here, but those were just politics. What he’ll be remembered for is the post-Katrina rebuilding work of he and wife Rosalynn when they showed up to work in the Habitat for Humanity Carter Work Project.

Hurricane Katrina also brought President George W. Bush several times to our Coast to inspect the devastation and rebuilding. Interestingly, it was Lyndon Johnson who started the role of “consoler-in-chief” in 1965 when he visited New Orleans after Hurricane Betsy.

Four years later Cat 5 Camille, the strongest storm up to that time, toppled the 20th Century scaffolding of this coastline. President Richard Nixon flew down to console those gathered at Gulfport Airport in early September 1969.

“Mississippians stood taller today, reminded no less by a student of history Richard Milhouse Nixon that out of adversity greatness often grows,” Herald reporter Tom Cook began the front page story.

Nixon admitted nothing he learned in advance prepared him for the sheer destruction. “What a challenge it is!” he told the thousands who’d braved piles of debris and wrecked roads to greet him. “I am confident you are going to meet it.”

Nine years later, following the Watergate scandal that led to resignation, the Coast people gave Nixon a rousing welcome when he spoke at the Coast Coliseum for Veteran’s Day. They had not forgotten his kindness nor his steering of monies to help in rebuilding.

Included among disaster related visits are then-former President Bill Clinton visiting Gulfport with Gov. Haley Barbour after Katrina in 2005. Former President George H.W. Bush also helicoptered to the Coast to help coordinate Katrina relief efforts for his president son.

Five years later, President Barack Obama stopped in Gulfport for the 2010 BP oil spill that devastated local beaches and seafood industries.

Disaster visits aside, Ronald Reagan and Donald J. Trump came to the Coast seeking votes for themselves or others. But gone from most memories is Trump’s earliest unsuccessful visit in 1994 when he wanted to develop Gulfport’s popular Marine Life oceanarium into a casino.

Three decades had lapsed between the beginning of the disaster visits and the last president-in-office visit, but rarely does an aspiring president not campaign here in modern times.

Are you curious when the first visit of a would-be president occurred? That’s a close historical competition between Andrew Jackson and Zachary Taylor.

Andrew Jackson’s familiarity with our Coast came with his early military career and the War of 1812.

And the famous Battle of New Orleans.

In fact, the Coast’s southeastern slice is named Jackson County, possibly after him although local historians debate that. After the war, Congress authorized then General Jackson to oversee the construction of a strategic military road between Mobile and New Orleans and inland.

Zachary Taylor was tasked with completing what was called the Jackson Military Road. He organized troops to finish the infrastructure between Pearl River and Bay St. Louis and in 1820-21 the Army officer was stationed in Bay St. Louis to help guard the coastal frontier. This early military career, however, is not Taylor’s most legendary feat.

That apparently happened later in 1848 when Taylor stood in front of a Bay St. Louis crowd, characteristically pounding his fists and leaning his long frame across the podium to make a point. The hastily constructed podium did not hold up to the abuse and the future president tumbled with the disintegrating platform.

Taylor’s vent of profanities went unrecorded by a press corps because The Bay was then a small seaside village and Taylor did little stumping for votes.

So did this really happen? It’s a good story, and he was elected the 12th president in November that year and a son owned Waveland property. In fact, many believed he liked this region so much that he bought a house in Pascagoula, and his widow spent time with their daughter Betty there after Taylor’s unexpected death in office.

Some occasional mentions of visits are fading and dubious, among these James Monroe and Ulysses S. Grant. There’s another floating story that Calvin Coolidge once made a train stop here but lived up to his nickname, Silent Cal, by not speaking or getting off of the train platform.

The president who spent the longest stretch of time is Woodrow Wilson. His winter holiday of 1913-14 in Pass Christian was at the large beachfront home of Alice Herndon. He played golf, fished, greeted the locals and rested up after a strenuous congressional fight over war with Mexico. The Herald declared, “He will be a guest of the whole Coast.”

This trip is particularly remembered for Wilson’s releasing of a “dove of peace.” The antebellum home he stayed in was renamed the Dixie White House and later was lost to a hurricane.

Another longer-staying person was Harry S. Truman who in 1933 and 1935 rented the “Sunshine Cottage” on the beach road in Biloxi. His family loved to fish, crab and flounder here. As a senator, he returned in 1941 for the funeral of his friend, Mississippi Sen. Pat Harrison.

His last post-presidency visit was likely in 1955 to fish with longtime Biloxi friends, the Luxichs. The Herald reported Truman commented he’d love to live on the Coast.

Both Roosevelts – Franklin and Theodore – are also on the Coast roster.

FDR’s first taste of local seafood came when he visited as Navy assistant secretary under Wilson, to inspect local ports. Then in April 1937 as president he combined vacation and presidential duties, arriving by train and proceeding by a 25-car motorcade to inspect Biloxi and Gulfport veteran facilities. Thousands from South Mississippi lined streets to wave flags at the motorcade.

FDR’s cousin, Teddy, visited at least twice. His first was in October 1905, during his third year in office. When he had mentioned a sympathy with “the simple life,” Biloxians hatched a plan that he should come here. Within a year the newspaper reported TR was experiencing Biloxi Bacon, a local mullet, prepared on Deer Island. Interestingly, national records don’t report this visit.

However, a June 1915 Herald item confirms TR and his wife stayed at the home of their friend, John M. Parker of Pass Christian, and that he’d bought a castnet, called a “mullet gun.”

“Now that the colonel has a net we cannot see how he will ever be able to stay away for any length of time,” reported the Herald. “The old saying is that if he ever eats mullet he will be sure to return.”

The plethora of stories about presidents – past, present and future – visiting on the Coast keeps mounting as new history research tools become widely available.

Kat Bergeron, an award-winning veteran reporter and feature writer who specializes in Gulf Coast history and sense of place, is retired from the Sun Herald. She writes this Gulf Coast Chronicles column as a freelance correspondent. Reach her at:

BergeronKat@gmail.com

Or, at Southern Possum Tales, P.O. Box 33, Barboursville, VA 22923