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A look at past presidents’ visits to Seattle as the city gears up for President Biden
It all started in 1880, when President Rutherford B. Hayes arrived by steamship in Seattle. Since then, presidential visits to the Emerald City have become a regular occurrence.
Politics
By Amanda Zhou
Seattle Times staff reporter
President Joe Biden is visiting Seattle on Friday, joining a long line of presidents that have come to the Emerald City.
Biden will use his Earth Day appearance to discuss his work “bringing down costs for American families” and growing the clean energy economy, according to a White House news release last week.
Before heading to Seattle, Biden will visit Portland on Thursday to discuss the $1 trillion infrastructure package approved by Congress and signed into law in November. The bill will allocate $1.2 billion in Oregon and $8.6 billion for Washington state.
As of Wednesday afternoon, details about Biden’s schedule were limited and no public events had been announced. But past visits from the White House led to road closures and increased traffic because of presidential motorcades. Typically, the U.S. Secret Service does not reveal the exact route in advance, which can make it tough to predict which roads will be closed.
Check seattletimes.com for the latest information about Biden’s visit to Portland and Seattle, including traffic details.
Biden last visited Seattle in November 2019 while campaigning in the Democratic presidential primaries, attending a fundraiser at the home of Amazon executive David Zapolsky.
His visit Friday comes 141 years after Washington’s first visit by a president, when President Rutherford B. Hayes arrived by steamship at the Yesler wharf in 1880 — 27 years after Washington Territory was founded, according to HistoryLink.
After that, presidents have regularly visited the Puget Sound area to give speeches and go on fishing trips, with Air Force One landing at Boeing Field or Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.
President Benjamin Harrison visited Seattle in 1891, two years after Washington became a state, and President Theodore Roosevelt visited Seattle in 1903, staying at the Washington Hotel during his trip.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower pressed the button that set in motion an electronic countdown chronometer on Nov. 10, 1958, starting the countdown to the Century 21 Exposition — the official name of the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair.
Then-former Vice President Richard Nixon, with his wife and daughter, rode the Seattle Center Monorail during their stay in 1962. President Gerald Ford spoke to a regional convention of restaurant and hotel operators in Seattle in 1980.
President Ronald Reagan was once given a University of Washington hat and football while visiting Seattle Center.