100 years ago on this day (1923), United States President Warren G. Harding made stops at Hutchinson and Dodge City during his summer tour of the West.
President Harding made a seven-hour visit to Reno County after speaking the previous night in Kansas City, Missouri.
The President arrived in Hutchinson by train. At 10:30 a.m., the 29th President gave a speech to 8,000 school children in Hutchinson at what was then Sylvan Park; the gazebo where the President delivered his remarks is still standing.
After 2:00 p.m., he gave a speech at the Kansas State fairgrounds focusing on agriculture.
40 days later, President Harding died at the age of 57 on the West Coast, suffering multiple health problems including a heart attack and pneumonia.
In the Hutchinson area, President Harding visited a wheat field west of town, seeing the harvest first-hand, and talking to farmers about the legislative measures taken by the government to assist American farmers. Clad in a tie, hat, and coat, President Harding formed a bundle of wheat he picked up from shocks. The President later got on a tractor and pulled the wheat binder around the field, at the urging of First Lady Florence Harding.
There was a lunch-time reception for the President at the Bisonte Hotel in Hutchinson. After lunch came the speech at the fairgrounds, where 13,000 people had packed the grandstands. President Harding was greeted with a 21-gun salute, and Southwestern Bell Telephone Company installed loudspeakers to amplify Harding’s remarks.
Also in Hutchinson, President Harding assisted in the dedication of the Carey salt mine.
At 5 p.m., the presidential train departed Hutchinson for Dodge City en route to Denver, the next stop on his national tour. President Harding gave a speech in Dodge City at 8:30 p.m., on the theme of community cooperation.
There are four monuments honoring President Harding that exist. Two are in Marion, Ohio, where he is interred, and two are in Hutchinson. Students later saved pennies for a monument marking the site of his visit -- it's a President Warren G. Harding Memorial on Fourth Avenue in Reno County. There's also a marker in the park where he spoke.